Note to GOP: This is Not Your Hippy Mother’s Vagina!

REVIEW BY SUSAN KLOPFER

Author, speaker, blogger

www.themiddleoftheinternet.com

Why do I keep thinking about grabbing my crotch? I guess it is a new fear-based reaction I'm having since the presidential primaries went south on sex, and I do not think I am alone. These Michael Jackson moments are brought to me because of the Grand Old Party, the same folks many of us have been fighting over sex and privacy since back in the 1960s…and 50s…and 20s…and…

Certainly, many of us remember The Vagina Monologues, those powerful and crusty episodic essays about a woman’s private parts and sexual experiences, first presented as a play in 1996. Every story falls back on The Vagina; all are short essays about love and rape, menstruation, female genital mutilation, masturbation, birth, topped off with a special monologue on The Big O. Lovingly and beautifully treated, frightening, refreshing, disgusting and witty, the entire package brought a big wink-wink from Off Broadway theatre when it opened.

After the excitement of Eve Ensler’s play about womanhood waned, most theatre lovers moved on, except for catching up with her yearly contributions that often focus on global women’s themes.

As women (and men, too) we were moving forward, especially in the hippy 60s when we were fighting for a myriad of civil rights and social justice, almost getting somewhere in this country’s rare dialogue on sexual honesty – we certainly never expected a giant rip to appear on the very most private part of our bodies, not in 2012, for God’s sake.

This new, jagged tear (requiring numerous stitches) comes directly from the Republicans, the GOP – the folks who brought us Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, three white, foolish, men who honestly believe they should take over our our bodies!

Now, here comes a Brit to our rescue, and bless his soul! American/British journalist and author Denis G. Campbell, quite familiar with politics on both sides of the pond, is taking on the Grand Old Party, knowing that the GOP is shagging American women. Campbell is actually doing something about it, via The Vagina Wars, GOP’S War on Women.

His newest book explores what is going on over recent political attempts to undermine American women, and Campbell is quite serious in his observations. Sure, the British can be so very witty with their own sexual slang; consider words like sex on a stick (for sexually attractive, slim, woman), sex wee (semen), wabs (female breasts) and “vadge” for vagina. Even collecting a paycheck is “getting screwed” in Campbell’s world.

Despite the sophomoric humor, the UK still has it together when it comes to sex, especially for a country that is not really old enough to act like big brother to silly, sexually immature, American Republicans, who cannot talk for more than 30 seconds about responsible, safe sex or homosexuality without giggling—or making threats. 

We are talking maybe 300 years or so since England united with Scotland and only 200 or so years since the Brits united with Ireland. These are not particularly old, wise combined people. They simple are not frequently engaged in public political debate over a woman’s right to contraception, abortion, and doing kinky things in the bedroom.

What clicked for Campbell was recalling his experience as an audience member for playwright Ensler’s Monologues, before it was popular, and then returning home to the UK with a “better understanding of the pressure and pain” women face about sexuality and living. Going back home to “socialist Europe” – often “disdained” for issues from medical care to social contracts by the U.S. right, offered a teachable moment for this journalist.

Campbell remains struck by what he sees as the common sense and openness of thought in the UK over sex, compared to what one sees in the U.S. media and its coverage of “poisonous politics.”  We can learn from this outside observer who tells us to quit sticking our heads in the sand over sexual issues, and to recognize the mental and financial harm of maintaining an Ostrich in the sand view of sexuality.

Campbell in some ways writes like a modern social psychologist, opening up an honest, important dialogue often based on research, a media approach, which is needed here and now.

One might observe this British writer follows in the footsteps of brave Molly Pitcher, a somewhat unknown American woman who during the battle of Monmouth, midway through the Revolutionary War, brought water to the troops from a nearby spring, and then took over her husband’s place at a cannon when he was wounded

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Under fire, and losing men, the artillery unit was going to fall back until Molly Pitcher volunteered to bravely serve the cannon in her husband’s place. 

So, the Brit is coming and this time brave Denis G. Campbell brings us fresh water and helps us take up our cannons. From How Did The Culture War Get Here through topics including Supreme Court Appointments, ALEC…and the Very Bad Month, Which Mitt Romney Will Women Voters See, and Why a Man Wrote This Book, Campbell’s contribution is a must-read for those who want to understand the whys and where-fors of this current war, and what can be done to change the climate, once again.

Sensible men and sensible women will find this book an important read; silly men and silly women should read it too, because we must try to help the GOP to grow up and stay out of our private, sexual matters. White GOP men typically keep their affairs to themselves – out of the public’s eyes. (Maybe threat of exposure would keep them off our backs.)

Meanwhile, Campbell’s The Vagina Wars, GOP’S War on Women honors our brave, hippy mothers and so many others who have fought this war before. With solid information and encouragement, at least we have a fresh start.

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U.S. Secret Service agents sent packing from Colombia; Reminds me of Secret Service and JFK Assassination...so long ago

So why do I think of this book, when I read about what just happened in Colombia with the Secret Service and President Obama? Consider what happened when our president visited this country over the weekend:

President Barack Obama called Sunday for a "thorough" and "rigorous" investigation into allegations involving prostitutes and Secret Service agents in Colombia. Some 11 Secret Service agents and officers are being investigated over preliminary findings that they allegedly brought back several prostitutes to a hotel in Cartagena, U.S. government sources familiar with the investigation have told CNN.

"What happened here in Colombia is being investigated by the director of the Secret Service," said Obama, who spoke in Cartagena, where he was in town for the Summit of the Americas event. "I expect that investigation to be thorough and I expect it to be rigorous. If it turns out that some of the allegations that have been made in the press are confirmed, then of course I'll be angry," he said. 

The alleged misconduct occurred before Obama arrived in Cartagena. The Secret Service personnel have since been sent back to the United States and put on administrative leave, the agency said. The U.S. military said that five U.S. troops who were working with the Secret Service are also under investigation for missing curfew and alleged "misconduct" at the same Colombian hotel.

Source: CNN

* * * * *

So who are we kidding? Drinking and carousing is something new for the Secret Service? Ask historians and others, like the author of this book who was once a member of the Secret Service, and you will get a different story from what some national reporters are saying today -- that this is the "WORST thing" ever reported about the Secret Service (the people charged with protecting the President of the United States).

CONSPIRACY THEORIES HAUNT the Kennedy assassination; Abraham Bolden several years ago offered a new one, concerning discrimination and evidence suppression. Becoming, in JFK's words, the Jackie Robinson of the Secret Service, Bolden joined the White House detail in 1961, as the first African American Secret Service agent.

He was personally appointed to this position by the new, young president and I was excited to meet him. But I soon learned that Bolden has a temper; I learned this the hard way several weeks after I personally met and talked with him at a JFK conference in Dallas where he spoke about his book.

In fact, Bolden got so mad at me over something I wrote about him in a quick review, that he tracked me down through the conference organizers to complain -- hard. He even threatened me that he would sue me. It was an interesting experience, and I thought he was a bit harsh for a couple of sentences he didn't like. After all, I was writing a review -- something that would help him sell books.

But looking back at this, I realize that Bolden is not the kind of person to hush up something he believes to be important. He  is a fighter who stands up for what he believes. He is not a yes-man, and that is one reason why his book is particularly significant today.

I just wish he had been with the Secret Service this past week, and just maybe we would learn what really happened in Colombia. I don't have good feelings about what I've read so far, and I doubt that anything of substance has been reported.

Further, I have heard several reporters offer that what happened in Colombia was "the worst" disaster ever for the Secret Service. Oh give me a break. They screwed up with JFK, for sure, and from what Bolden writes, they did a lot more than party. Even the special Congressional Committee investigation, well after the Warren Commission, did not have nice things to say about the Secret Service, declaring them "inadequate". Hell, even some noted recent Lincoln assassination theorists assert the Secret Service helped with that shooting, too.

At the Dallas conference, I remember Bolden saying that his introduction to the Secret Service was not what he expected:

Already beset by racism (he once found a noose suspended over his desk), Bolden's idealism was shattered by the drinking and carousing of other agents.

"Soon after the assassination, he receives orders that hint at an effort to withhold, or at least to the color, the truth. He discovers that evidence is being kept from the Warren Commission and when he takes action, finds himself charged with conspiracy to sell a secret government file and sentenced to six years in prison, where both solitary confinement and the psychiatric ward await. That there was a conspiracy to silence him seems unarguable, but Bolden's prose is flat; so is his dialogue. This story is more enthralling than Bolden's telling of it, but the reader who sticks with it will enter a world of duplicitous charges and disappearing documents fit for a movie thriller." (Publishers Weekly)

Bolden's book today?

 ***** Highly recommend.