Colored Television with Friends and Neighbors
What I'm watching & reading while our government destroys everything
How many ways are there to say the news is dreadful? Our moron president and the morons he’s appointed are an international embarrassment. This week the head of the Department of Homeland Security didn’t know what habeas corpus is, and Trump told the (Black) president of South Africa that “hundreds” of white farmers are being murdered by Blacks in his country (even though none are)--and then showed him a fake video from X/Twitter to “prove” it. Here is what the BBC says about the video he showed, and here’s the press secretary angrily lying about it. (In the second clip, CBS also provides incorrect information about the video; the BBC fact-checked.)
Late last night the House passed a budget bill that does the opposite of what most decent Americans would want: gives more than $800 billion in tax breaks to the richest people in the country, adds $150 billion to our already bloated military budget and sets aside $50 billion to keep building the wall Mexico still isn’t paying for. The bill also slashes Medicaid, Medicare, food stamps, and everything that makes life enjoyable, including funding for libraries, parks, colleges, the arts, student loans, public schools, non-profits, federal employee pensions, and clean energy. The Congressional Budget Office predicts this bill will grow our deficit by nearly $4 trillion over the next decade and will slow our economy, increase inflation, and raise taxes by 74% on the lowest income earners. Whatever tax breaks there are for the middle class expire in 2028 when (God willing) Trump leaves office – but the tax breaks for the billionaires are forever. Good times.
Plus Georgia is reenacting episode 9 of The Handmaid’s Tale by keeping a dead woman alive as an incubator for her fetus, which is not developing well. Her family is begging for this to stop –and for a kicker, they’re being held responsible for the massive costs of keeping her body alive.
And Texas jailed a homeless woman of color for five months for having a miscarriage. (Where are women supposed to put the remains of their miscarriages? Because they keep getting arrested no matter where they put them.) This poor woman’s mug shot was posted with many headlines saying she was arrested for “flushing her baby down the toilet” at a Whataburger. The initial reports made it sound like she had an infant and tried to flush it away. And then they held her for five fucking months even though they quickly realized she’d simply miscarried in a stall and probably needed medical help, not jail.
Why are we about to pass a bill that punishes the poor? Perhaps we find it easier to hate the poor and blame them for their poverty–assume they deserved to be fired or lose their insurance, think they shouldn’t have had those kids if they couldn’t take care of them–than to fix our societal imbalances.
I don’t understand why more of the ultra-rich aren’t in favor of just paying 40 percent in taxes so everyone could have the care they need. They’d still be richer than anyone on earth, so why not do that?? Why not be a good guy and help everyone on earth with your largesse? Instead, they’ve invested in the vilest, most toxic POS president and are twiddling their thumbs while he destroys democracy. I’ve read they want to start a new, society of some kind where the rich run everything. (Like now, except out in the open, not behind the scenes.) So billionaires may want our democracy to be destroyed. Nothing else explains what is happening as this bill heads to the Senate…
So I may as well watch some TV!
At my daughter’s urging, Renee and I started watching a Hulu reality show, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, which just released its second season. A group of long-haired, sexy-dancing, young, Mormon moms started a Mom Tok a few years ago in which they released adorable, synchronized dance videos. They got hundreds of thousands of followers (and I can see why — watching synchronized dance videos is so fun, and to know these were wholesome Mormon moms doing these dances made them even cuter). But then it turned out they were also “soft swinging” with one another, which meant they were doing everything but intercourse with one another’s spouses–many of them while not drinking any alcohol because, you know, they’re Mormon. Fascinating. Anyway, this is a show that can be on in the background. It’s on right now as I’m typing this. It’s the kind of show that makes me glad to be home and boring.
As an aside: God, I love being almost 60. I can remember when I felt pressure to look like those women on MomTok, and it was exhausting feeling I always had to look pretty, to have make-up on, etc. I am grateful I care less and less about what I look like. (I wish I didn’t care at all, because really, why do we put so much energy into that? But I’m still grateful I care less now than ever.) I read an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert recently in which she talked about why she shaved her head, and she said something like, “I was just sick of always having to be pretty.” And that totally resonated with me. Same, Liz, same.
Which reminds me of a TikTok channel I discovered today in which a feisty, middle-aged woman has started the We Do Not Care Club, and is soliciting ideas for things we older women no longer care about. The comments are hysterical. Here; enjoy:
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Renee and I also watched the first episode of an Apple show, Your Friends and Neighbors, starring John Hamm, in which a super-successful executive loses his wife and his job and turns to a life of crime–stealing from his friends and neighbors.
I’m not sure we will keep watching, as his behavior makes him totally unsympathetic (even though the viewer has sympathy about his wife leaving him and about the circumstances in which he loses his job). I mean stealing isn’t a great moral choice anyway, but from friends and neighbors? That seems unforgivable. Anyone else farther into this show than episode one and want to convince me to keep going?
I read a great little novel by Anne Tyler, Three Days in June about a divorced couple coming together for their 30-year-old daughter’s wedding. The story is sweet and engaging and looks at the fallout of infidelity and whether people can move past it. I enjoyed it and recommend it.
And I listened to an audiobook by Danzy Senna, Colored Television (and isn’t that a great cover??), that focuses on a biracial couple with two kids, one autistic. They live in L.A. and are struggling to make a living. They are artists: the wife’s a novelist (and an adjunct) and the husband’s a painter, and they are living in relative luxury in a house-sit for a Hollywood writer friend. When the friend comes back, they will have to find a rental in a crappy neighborhood. But the wife just finished her second novel, and we share her fantasy that their fortunes are about to change because there’ll be a bidding war on her book. We hear the story from the point of view of the wife, who is desperate to move her family into a solid, middle-class home of their own in what she calls “Multicultural Mayberry,” which I think is Altadena before the fires, a great neighborhood with lots of people of color in it. The book is about race but also about class and the longing for wealth and the culture of Hollywood, and I found it moving and distressing and well written, with a plot and motivations that really gripped me. I recommend this one, too.
Renee just told me her phone says it’s snowing in Vermont. Ah, May in New England. (No, I’ve enjoyed the cooler weather, it’s fine, but I could do with rain coming only at night for a while.) Everytime it rains now I think of a novel I recently read, Private Rites, which is a near-future dystopia in which it’s always raining and the whole world is waterlogged. Reading that book makes the rain seem menacing, especially when it feels like it won’t let up.
I read this brilliant piece of advice from a fellow grieving mom, Charlotte Starfire:
“Make a list of the challenging, anger-producing grief-invoking, fearful experiences you still clutch. Then with mindful awareness, imagine each experience symbolically as rich, nourishing soil comprised of the decay you are willing to release.”
For me, for example, that would mean I think of Amber keeping Maggie, the now 11-year-old daughter of my late son, from seeing me for six years now, and I imagine that experience, that ongoing, painful experience, can make me more open to growth, learning, and spiritual awakening if only I can release my bitterness about it…I get it, but I’m still clutching my bitterness…
I have written just one poem this month and I revised and submitted one essay about my sister. I’m finalizing edits to my second poetry manuscript, tentatively titled Perfectly Good Husband: The Divorce Poems, which I am going to submit to a bunch of places that have open reading periods until June 1st. The book is divided into three sections: Before, During, After. What do you think? Would you want to read that?
Which reminds me I’m listening to Lyz Lenz’s book An American Ex-Wife which is like a cross between a non-fiction book about the state of gender inequity in modern marriage and a memoir. It’s good.
I’m also listening to Ross Gay’s Book of Delights which is, well, delightful. Thoughtful little mini-essays about various serious subjects but written through the lens of what the author can find delightful in any given situation. He is aware bad things exist, but he’s choosing to focus elsewhere.
Kind of like me with my reading and watching, I guess. Please hit the heart, share with someone you think might want to see my reviews and summaries, and subscribe!
In answer to your question, Yes! I do want to read your new poetry collection!