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Enough with the Hillary Deathwatches, the Eight Belles comparisons, the Wednesday morning quarterbacking, the super-annuating, the gloating not gloating, the Wright stuffing, the obliterating, the primary parsing.

Everybody take a breath, sit back, have a lovely European style coffee, and play your old “Come Together” LP. Don’t try to figure out what it means. Toe jam football. Walrus gumboot. So? Chill.

Especially you, John King. You must be exhausted from a late night of poking your ouiiga board, finger painting, expanding/contracting your counties, while the best political team on television was laughing at you behind your back. You made your OCD work for you, now take a rest.

The Jenna One is getting married – because she can - down at the Yearning for Scion Ranch this weekend. Keep Jim Baker busy. The Bush Dynasty is all compounded down in Texas.

It’s Mother’s Day weekend. In honor of Mom, let’s have a primary worry free weekend. Play some hoops. Rest your voice. Sleep in your own bed.

The Swiftboats for McBush are gassing up. Louisiana Governor, Bobby Jindal is being vetted. John McSupreme Court is loving him some strict constructionists. John McSharraf has his flag pin stuck in his chest. Limbaugh lower now.

Rest up, you two, dear warriors, then come together right now over me.

I know, I know, I live in the house that conspiracy theories built, but yes they killed the DC Madam. “She left two suicide notes,” just ain’t making it for me. All those pompous ass, family values boys were afraid of getting outed. Come on.

Rest in peace, Deborah Jeane Palfrey. I hope you were running a second set of books and a really good friend knows where they are and where the key is.

In other news – three darling citizens of Lesbos who have nothing better to do, have sued a local GL organization for use of the word “lesbian”. One guy said his sister can’t say she’s a Lesbian because her identity has been usurped by “certain ladies.” Whom I’d like to meet.

Have an ouzo and calm down. Get your chitron out of the twist. You are so last century. The kids have already moved on to queer and questioning and transitioning. And I still know women who wouldn’t say lesbian if their mouths were full of one.

FYI Lesbos is also known as the island of Mytilene, so from now on I’d like to be known as a mytilene-feminist. Efcharisto very much.

And another thing. I am denouncing my pastor. Actually, I denounce all pastors.

It is an amazing spring day here in New York City. Finally. The trees are leafing out, providing cover for the tattered, plastic Fairway bags lufting all winter in the bare tree branches. The yellow forsythia petals have given way to green leaf. The jonquils are past. But it is high bloom time for the flowering crab trees in Riverside Park. I wish I could freeze frame them, but their mutability is their poignant charm.

To reverse one of my favorite literature tropes, that old “pathetic fallacy” of the personification of inanimate objects, allow me to floral-ize myself. This long primary season, I am one flowering crab, but without the charm.

As the post-primary letdown sets in Pennsylvania and Keystone staters get back to actual bitterness, Indiana and North Carolina are now in the media spotlight. The big Good Sam Club RV map of where we’ve been will have the last magnetized states of West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, South Dakota and Montana all filled in by June 3. And then the gas-guzzling behemoth of the Democratic Party will trundle off to Colorado, the Rocky Mountain State and Denver.

Donner, party of one.

Unlike many of my friends, I am not cranky that the race goes on. I am not calling for Hillary to leave the race or for Bill to leave the human race. Okay, maybe the latter. I remind my impatient friends, this too is what democracy looks like. They haven’t seen it for seven and a half years, so they’re confused.

What I am most crabby appleton about is the media coverage. John King obsessively poking his military-inspired voting GPS system as Wolf looks on over his shoulder, slack-jawed, like a Cro-Magnon discovering fire.

Furrow-browed and deeply caring Rev. Bill Moyers hearing Jeremiah Wright’s confession.

Mary Matalin, not the one who can’t hear, the Matalin who doesn’t listen, tight-lipping her theory that the Democrats really don’t want to win the White House. They are more concerned with solidifying their hold on Congress. They could care less.

Well, I don’t care what Democrat wins the presidency; I just want her to appoint me as Media Czar. And I don’t mean the new nice kind of czar Bush appoints when he has no clue what to do. War Czar, for example. The place should be crawling with Katrina Czars, Gitmo Czars, Sub-Crime Mortgage Czar. I mean the old Russian crabby czars. Like Putin.

When the story broke that Putin was having an affair with a Russian Olympian, a gold medal gymnast in rhythmic gymnastics, he was asked about it at a press conference. His wife did not appear at his side. Putin, whose soul George had seen during a staring contest, waxed on creepily about how Russian women are the best, Italians second and then groused about people who with “infected noses” dig into other people’s private lives. Which was how he got his start.

The next day the reporter’s paper was shut down. The picture of the gymnast with the sole of her foot on the back of her head disappeared. No word on the poor guy who asked the question at the press conference.

That kind of Media Czar, but a little less gulagy. I would institute mandatory term limits on all pundits. I would make it illegal to use your own name in the title of a news show. I am hoping Rachel Maddow will agree to be my Deputy Czar.

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I know it’s not fair to take Barack Obama’s words out of context. I actually agree with him about the dreary economic dead-endedness many Americans feel. Grocery-buying, tank-filling, tax paying American citizens, unlike our faith-based economists, are realists. Class resentment is a bitter pill whether you swallow it with rods or religion.

But it’s Pennsylvannia pre-primary pounce time and mountains will be made. It’s not like Obama was wind-surfing off Nantucket. Roll tape of pick-up basketball game. Ixnay on the bowling footage.

Okay, I’ll take back the thing about the gun rack and church.

But don’t you be going after my Annie Oakley! Have you no decency?

I was raised on Little Miss Sure Shot. In my impressionable single digits, I watched her on TV. Hence the photos of everyone in the family pictures posed in civvies, except me. I’m in the red and black, fringed cowgirl shirt with holster tied to my right thigh with a piece of rawhide. You can’t see the rawhide, but it’s there.

Annie Oakley, whose offspring went on to make a fortune in high-price, sporty sunglasses, and the very sexually ambiguous fly-girl, Mary/Peter Martin/Pan, were my early role models. I never warmed up to the lives of the young Christian martyrs which were bedtime stories for the tween Ratzinger. To me, the stories of girl-martyrs having their eyes gouged out in early abstinence-only programs or boy-martyrs asking to be turned on the barbie for Jesus, were more unsettling than inspiring.

But Annie Oakley! She was one sharpshooter! She could split a playing card edge at 90 feet with a .22 caliber rifle. And put five or six more holes in it before it touched the ground. And dodge sniper fire from Wild Bill at the same time. And she never shot anyone in the face. I’m not sure about the last two.

Could our darling Dems please hold their fire at each other? I’m much more interested in how they intend to set their sights on John McCain who each day girds himself in more media-made Reagan Teflon than any Iraqi soldier was ever issued.

Enough with the sappy Compassion Forums. It’s time to get out to the target-practice range of our nation’s Rod and Gun Club and show us some sharp shooting. Whoever hits the most skeets wins all the super-delegates. Pull!

Urvashi spoke at the Race, Sex and Power Conference at Illinois University’s gorgeous new Forum Building. Her panel on “Sexual Citizenship” followed the opening plenary talk given by the indefatigable Dr. Jocylen Elders.

Dr. Elders had been Surgeon General in the first Clinton Presidency but was fired when she said that masturbation is a healthy part of safe sex. Bill did not stand by his woman. It’s his male-pattern badness. In the question and answer period after her wonderful talk, she remarked that more vows of abstinence have been broken than condoms.

I always wanted to make a bumper sticker that said, “I Masturbate and I Vote.” It gives a whole new meaning to “pulling the lever.”

After Urvashi spoke, she flew on to Minneapolis to address nine hundred attendess at the ninth annual “Rainbow Families” Conference. I stuck around and enjoyed the April lake effect snow in Chicago and emceed the 19th Annual LGBT Center Dinner at the gorgeous old Chicago Hilton Hotel.

On the morning of the dinner, the Center Board Chair, Robert Kohl and board member Vickie Raymont gave me a tour of The Center, opened just this year to serve the LGBT community. I thanked them for their time on such a busy day, but they said they love to show off their dream become reality. I soon saw what they meant.

The Center on Halsted is a stunning, welcoming, exciting space and even at 11a it was hopping. A cyber center, a gym, a counseling center, expandable meeting rooms, a theater, a community kitchen are all beautifully designed for the needs of the Chicago LGBT community.

A beautiful new Whole Foods Market rents space from the Center and they share a common café space. It’s a genius, innovative win-win situation. Other organizations should take note: GLAAD linked with Blockbuster, HRC with a Prada Store, The National Black Justice Coalition with Restoration Hardware, NGLTF with Cinnabon. Everybody loves Cinnabon.

The dinner was a real celebration of the opening of the Center. I introduced Lorna Luft. A friend at the Race, Sex and Gender Conference asked if it was the real Lorna Luft or a drag Lorna Luft. She was mighty real. After a great dinner, the dance band “Big Fun” cranked it up and Chicago got down.

I couldn’t wait to get back home to tell my friend, Richard Burns what I’d seen. Richard, who runs the NYC GLBT Center and is in the middle of a Capital campaign for an addition to the Center, was way ahead of me. He and his board already visited and stolen plenty of ideas!!

The Pope is coming to Manhattan and we don’t have congestion pricing. It’s going to be hell.

I can’t focus on the news, but near as I can figure The Widow Ratzinger is carrying an Olympic torch for Cardinal Egan of the Diocese of New York. He’s come a-courtin! Antiques Roadshow says it’s the original torch! Benny the Dict will be saying a mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and at Yankee Stadium. Cardinal Egan will throw out the first host.

Though I used to be a conscientious Designated Bush Watcher, these days I watch the news distractedly. I don’t think I’m alone. The New York Times has accommodated by becoming news Cliff Notes. I’m dissociative. I pretend that HBO’s John Adams is the breaking news. I went to the very helpful WhatTheHellisWrongwithMe website and self-diagnosed what ails me. I believe I have early onset PBTSD, Post-Bush-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

My presenting symptoms of lethargy, distraction and dissociation are compounded by Clinton Fatigue. And I am one. What IS Hillary Clinton’s sleep number? I’m tired for her. But why does she have to have an exit strategy and Petraeus doesn’t?

I have a wicked case of Oblahblahma Cynicism which prevents me from seeing the magic of another guy with no experience, known for his talking skills, good or bad. He weenied out with timetable babble when questioning Petraeus.

With my PBTSD, I wouldn’t know a revolution of the human spirit if I fell over one. No, I can’t. I can’t stomach another story of pathetic boomer parents bonding with their darling children by taking cooking classes, snowboarding and switching from Clinton to Obama. Yet another reason not to have children.

With a pre-existing condition of Pre-Collision Intelligence, I have profound disbelief that the disaster that is John McCain is an actual presidential contender. Two words: George Bush. How can Republicans say that they will vote their pocketbook, which has been so thoroughly picked?

At night I am plagued by rational fears that Condi Rice is going to spring fully formed as a vice-presidential running mate out of the giant wen on McCain’s cheek.
Condi’s been giving signals that he hasn’t been picking up – there’s a great start. McCain’s wife, Republican Spice, has been scrambling them and will snap Condi’s neck if she gets an inch closer.

Instead of going to therapy, I’ve been watching HBO’s In Treatment with Gabriel Byrne and my favorite, Dianne Wiest. Not really. I can’t watch. I’m too restless, but my friends who watch say he never discusses insurance coverage, co-pay or prescription prices. Or that hour sessions are fifty minutes long.

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Those gals from Boston know how to throw a party! It’s not just about tea anymore. Oh it hasn’t been for years. Have you been to a Red Sox World Series Parade? The Annual Women’s Dinner to benefit the Fenway Community Health Center was held in the Westin Copley and the ladies were out!!

At the special donor cocktail party before dinner, I ran into lots of wonderful galpals. Byllye Avery and Ngina Lythcott, New York pals who have moved to Boston, and pioneers in black women’s health were there, giving me a hard time about Hillary. Dr. Jane Petro, just back with lots of dish from Dubai later bid to have lunch with me this summer at Ptown’s Karoo Café. We’ll catch up especially on her strategy of going to work in Bermuda shorts under her burkha. Alix Ritchie and Marty Davis, longtime supporters of women and women in journalism brought stories of Ptown transplants to Fort Lauderdale. It was also great to meet new supporters of the historical work of Fenway. Especially the dames from Southie who offered to be my bodyguards if the jokes didn’t go well.

Again, I was honored to be the amuse bouche, the ordained emcee for the evening’s dinner and reminded everyone that this was the last supper – under the Bush Regime.

Boston Mayor Tom Menino and his great wife Angela came to the dinner as they always have. Denise Simmons, a long and strong supporter of Fenway was there too – but this time as the first African-American, out lesbian Mayor of the city of Cambridge! I want her to run for president.

Through the hard work of co-chairs and table captains, a not-very-silent auction, a pledge drive with a match from Dr. Susan Love, a pioneer in women and breast cancer, [who told me once she used my “Thanks for the Mammaries” story on an early record for her lesbian patients] and a live auction, lots more money was raised to reach the capital campaign goals.

One fabulous table captain had made goodie bags filled with favors for the friends she’d wrangled into coming to the dinner. One table had made an actual captain’s hat for their friend. As I was passing a table of Fenway revelers, one woman waved me over and handed me photos of me from the Jamesville-Dewitt H.S. yearbook of 1977! And thus I met a former student!

The fun of the evening helped me get through and over my mourning for my Rutgers Scarlet Knights.

I sat Shiva all night after their loss to U Conn.

My eyes are downcast. I am despondent.

No more Epiphanies. No more joie de C. Viv.

Join me in demanding that Pat Summit leave the race.

And why does no one demand that George Bush leave?

Another time, now I must resume my mourning in America.

She hasn’t asked me, but I don’t think Hillary should get out of the race. I do think she should take maybe a couple of days off. Go down to Florida where the state motto translated from the Latin is: Florida, where your primary vote doesn’t count either. She should sit in the sun with a big straw hat on and read a big fat Danielle Steele book cover to cover. Chill.

Barack Obama went to the islands for Easter, heck, he couldn’t go to his old church, and he played some hoops while Hillary was trying to avoid non-sniper fire. Maybe rope-a-dope is his new strategy.

The campaign has gone on so long we’ve cycled through seasons of sports metaphors: the symbology of football Bowls, basketball bracketology, baseball spring training. Why stop before the Summer Olympics? The torch is on the way from Greece to China by way of Mt. Everest, through some got-nothing-to-lose monk riots. Let the games continue!

In a recent poll, and I don’t know about you, I can’t get enough of those recent polls, 38% of Democrats said that if their candidate isn’t the Presidential nominee they are going to vote for McCain. The poll was translated from scratchy Arabic on a cassette tape dropped off at CNN.

Based on that poll, everybody, even Fickle Friends of Hillary [FFOH] are calling for Hillary to get out of the race. I even heard someone invoke Tonya Harding. That is cold. Hey, we’ve come this far in the presidential marathon, why make Hillary pull a reverse Rosie Ruiz?

Fighters are made better by good sparring partners. Tennis players improve by with hard-hitting practice partners. My niece, who doesn’t get a lot of game time, takes her role in practice on her division-leading college lacrosse team very seriously.

If Barack Obama thinks the Clintons are relentless, petty and dirty double-teamers, I’m sure there’s a Yogi Berra saying that applies here to indicate that he ain’t seen nothing yet.

McCain is a reckless kamikazi for freedom. He has the grudging support of his fellow Republicans and their machine. McCain also has the full-larynxed support of the media boys he’s curried for years. They love his ass.

The Loserland television networks are invested in keeping the campaign going, despite their disingenuous goading of Hillary to quit. They say do the delegate math. There’s no way. They must have forgotten what Harvard’s Larry Summers said about women and math.

Like the print media, the networks are hemorrhaging audience to the Internet. This is their last campaign hurrah. And they desperately want to elect one more president for the Gipper.

So Obama/Michael Douglas quit your whining. Hillary is doing you a favor. Don’t be caught flat-footed. Get your cup on. Wear your head and mouth gear.

And watch for her knock out punch.

Kate Clinton - Segment 1

Kate Clinton - Segment 2

Kate Clinton - Segment 3

Kate Clinton - Segment 4

Kate Clinton - Segment 5

Kate Clinton - Segment 6

Kate Clinton pre-tour Interview

Kate Clinton Interviewed by Jennifer Corday

Kate Clinton & Urvashi Vaid backstage Interview

Kate Clinton End of Tour Interview

Kate Clinton on Katrina, Bushs and Dykes

So it was me, Easter pilgrims and spring breakers headed out to the Southwest. I landed in Phoenix, AZ and got a quick ride to Tempe with Barbara McCullough who caught me up over lunch on local politics and the schemes of Equality Arizona. That night I performed at their amazing new Arts Center. Neil Giuliano, now executive director of GLAAD, was in the audience. When he was mayor of Tempe, he had secured the funds and broken ground for the theater. It was great to see him in his old home town.

For a few years, I’ve been talking about a rumor I’d heard about a gang of old dames, circling up the silver airstreams and making a community north of Phoenix. Well, dang if 96 of them didn’t come down from AJ, short for the p.i. Apache Junction, and come to the show. I was surrounded by them after the show in a jostling, scrum of radiant crones. Next time I’m out that way, I have to make a pilgrimage. I don’t know what they’re doing up there in their sweat lodge, but they all look amazing, transcendent.

The next day I went to the state next door, New Mexico and did a show at The Human Rights Alliance dinner in Santa Fe. The dinner is an annual tradition by activists and for activists who are working to transform their state. They transformed a huge tennis center into a festive catered meal and a huge silent auction space. After that, the state should be easy.

One of their awards went to their Governor, Bill Richardson, just two days after he’d announced that he was supporting Barack Obama. It was the talk of the dinner. He graciously accepted the award, midst a too-small chorus of hisses. He was sporting a new beard. I think he was hoping it would disguise him.

While in booming Santa Fe, I stayed at the new Rainbow Visions a retirement community for senior LGBTs. My favorite amenity was the Billie Jean King recreation center housed in the main building with full restaurant and a lovely theater. The staff was friendly and fun, and I wanted to sit and hear the life-stories of many of the residents I met.

Even though the amateurs were traveling back home on Sunday, I made it time to see the last episode of the L-Word season. Talk about a perfect end to Passion Week. And thank goodness for another season, even if it’s a shortened one. A lot of old story lines were resurrected and I don’t know about you, but I need some closure.

SATURDAY - APRIL 26, 2008
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