I know it’s not in my best interest to fly my left-wing freak flag where I’m supposed to be promoting my fiction. I mean, I KNOW this. It’s burned me before. But since I can’t seem to work up a head of steam over anything but politics right at the moment, and this space is just begging for a little content…

Point the First: If you never watched THE WEST WING, some of this will make no sense to you. All you really need to know is that Jed Bartlet was a fictional president played for seven seasons by Martin Sheen on an award-winning TV show. He was liberal, brilliant, and often crucified for it. He was replaced by Jimmy Smits in the final season.

Point the Second: Yeah, I know Aaron Sorkin is a drug addict who was arrested in an airport for carrying a few different kinds of controlled substances. But Aaron Sorkin isn’t running for president, he’s just making a comment about the current contenders. And? George W. Bush is an admitted alcoholic who was arrested for driving under the influence, and nobody seems to have a problem with his being the leader of the free world, so.

Here’s a link to a make-believe conversation between Jed Bartlet and Barack Obama.

Remember, it’s FICTION. Mr. Obama never had this conversation; it was written by that evil, lefty drug addict, Sorkin – incidentally, also the author of the Tom Cruise/Jack Nicholson vehicle, A FEW GOOD MEN.

Still, it’s damned compelling fiction that uses a bunch of facts to bolster its argument.

My favorite bits?

OBAMA …They pivoted off the argument that I was inexperienced to the criticism that I’m — wait for it — the Messiah, who, by the way, was a community organizer. When I speak I try to lead with inspiration and aptitude. How is that a liability?

BARTLET Because the idea of American exceptionalism doesn’t extend to Americans being exceptional. If you excelled academically and are able to casually use 690 SAT words then you might as well have the press shoot video of you giving the finger to the Statue of Liberty while the Dixie Chicks sing the University of the Taliban fight song. The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it.

OBAMA You’re saying race doesn’t have anything to do with it?

BARTLET I wouldn’t go that far. Brains made me look arrogant but they make you look uppity. Plus, if you had a black daughter —

OBAMA I have two.

BARTLET — who was 17 and pregnant and unmarried and the father was a teenager hoping to launch a rap career with “Thug Life” inked across his chest, you’d come in fifth behind Bob Barr, Ralph Nader and a ficus.

AND…

OBAMA The problem is we can’t appear angry. Bush called us the angry left. Did you see anyone in Denver who was angry?

BARTLET Well … let me think. …We went to war against the wrong country, Osama bin Laden just celebrated his seventh anniversary of not being caught either dead or alive, my family’s less safe than it was eight years ago, we’ve lost trillions of dollars, millions of jobs, thousands of lives and we lost an entire city due to bad weather. So, you know … I’m a little angry.

OBAMA What would you do?

BARTLET GET ANGRIER! Call them liars, because that’s what they are. Sarah Palin didn’t say “thanks but no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. She just said “Thanks.” You were raised by a single mother on food stamps — where does a guy with eight houses who was legacied into Annapolis get off calling you an elitist? And by the way, if you do nothing else, take that word back. Elite is a good word, it means well above average. I’d ask them what their problem is with excellence. While you’re at it, I want the word “patriot” back. McCain can say that the transcendent issue of our time is the spread of Islamic fanaticism or he can choose a running mate who doesn’t know the Bush doctrine from the Monroe Doctrine, but he can’t do both at the same time and call it patriotic. They have to lie — the truth isn’t their friend right now. Get angry. Mock them mercilessly; they’ve earned it. McCain decried agents of intolerance, then chose a running mate who had to ask if she was allowed to ban books from a public library. It’s not bad enough she thinks the planet Earth was created in six days 6,000 years ago complete with a man, a woman and a talking snake, she wants schools to teach the rest of our kids to deny geology, anthropology, archaeology and common sense too? It’s not bad enough she’s forcing her own daughter into a loveless marriage to a teenage hood, she wants the rest of us to guide our daughters in that direction too? It’s not enough that a woman shouldn’t have the right to choose, it should be the law of the land that she has to carry and deliver her rapist’s baby too? I don’t know whether or not Governor Palin has the tenacity of a pit bull, but I know for sure she’s got the qualifications of one. And you’re worried about seeming angry? You could eat their lunch, make them cry and tell their mamas about it and God himself would call it restrained. There are times when you are simply required to be impolite. There are times when condescension is called for!

***

I apologize to those I’ve offended by linking to this essay. If I had an agent, he or she would no doubt be beating me about the head and shoulders with one of my three copies of the last Dixie Chicks CD. For anyone who’s still interested, I’ll be blogging on the topic of balancing plot with smut in m/m erotic romance later this week. Should be a hoot.

Happy Sunday, y’all. There are 45 days left till the election.

I’m not really back. That light at the end of the tunnel I thought I saw last month? Yeah. BIG-ass Amtrak passenger train. Not pretty. But that doesn’t mean I can’t get riled and do a turn as Ranty McRantypants if I FEEL LIKE IT. Dammit.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been truly political on this blog (unless you count Romancelandia politics, which I don’t) but at the risk of offending my right-wing buddies (all four of you) and in light of recent revelations, I feel the need to address – or re-address – how much so-called “abstinence education” in our public schools sucks AND blows at the same damn time.

Case in point: Bristol Palin, seventeen-year-old daughter of vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.

You know, at first? I cringed when I heard the pundits blaming Palin for her daughter’s situation. The usual, “Well, if she’d been home where she BELONGED instead of out running the state of Alaska, maybe her little girl wouldn’t be knocked up.”

Please. Like working mothers have the market cornered on early, unwanted grandmotherhood. I’m no fan of Palin’s politics or party, but slagging her because her daughter made a bad choice – as adolescents are SHOCKINGLY likely to do – makes me wanna kick some misogynist ass. Because where is Bristol’s father in this equation? Or the parents of Bristol’s baby-daddy? Or the baby-daddy himself?

But then I caught a clip of the Palin family’s pastor preaching purity (say that five times fast on half a cup of decaf, come on, I dare ya) and my attitude changed. “Purity is power,” says the pastor. “We teach our kids to abstain.”

This was followed by a clip of Sarah Palin talking about how she opposed “explicit sexual education in the schools.”

Okay, look…I was sexually active at seventeen. Do I regret it? Only my choices in partners, frankly. The actual sex wasn’t all that great, but because I was well educated on the topic of birth control, how to use it, and the consequences for NOT using, it didn’t ruin my life. Am I any less godly because I lost my cherry early? That’s not for me to say. Do I want my kids to follow in my footsteps on this issue? HELL no…BUT…if they choose not to listen to my endless refrain of, “Wait, it’ll be better if you WAIT, please for the love of God, WAIT,” they’ll know how to use a frickin’ condom.

Because really? Purity isn’t power. KNOWLEDGE is power. Teenagers have a nasty tendency to think they know best, whether it’s about the proper amount of time one should spend prepping for the geometry midterm or whether they should be screwing their significant others in the back of the nearest Chevy Bronco. Since they already think they’re invincible, let’s make SURE they know how to protect themselves against becoming parents too young and, incidentally, truly life-ruining consequences like AIDS, hepatitis, herpes and cervical-cancer-causing viruses. Whaddya say? Is it really that radical a concept?

The side benefit of all this icky education about sex is fewer unwanted kids being raised by under-educated parents, which have a tendency to be a drain on society. It never fails to amaze me how the very people who rail the loudest against “the government forcing sex-education on our families” (and for “government” in this equation, please read “your kid’s sixth grade health teacher,” a threat to our God-given liberties if ever I’ve seen one) in the schools are also the ones who bitch and moan about the so-called Welfare State. Fewer babies born to folks who don’t finish high school means fewer kids on public assistance, folks. Do the fucking math. Literally.

Think abstinence education isn’t a widespread phenomenon in this country? Think again. Right now, it’s the ONLY federally funded sex-ed in the United States. The current administration has spent…wait for it…over a BILLION taxpayer dollars on trying – and failing – to get our kids to JUST SAY NO to sexy-time. Why do I say “failing?” Because abstinence education – which isn’t really education at all, but propaganda that in at least one case compares a non-virginal teenaged girl to a dirty toothbrush - doesn’t work.

This paraphrased from a recent UNICEF study (yeah, UNICEF, those pinko-commie-terrorist-liberals who have a vested interest in…uh…feeding hungry children): The United States has the highest teenaged birth rate among 28 developed countries. In Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Sweden, less than 10 per 100,000 teenagers give birth per year. In the good ol’ USA? An average of 40 girls under the age of twenty per 100,000 pop out rugrats each and every year. And the numbers are highest in the Bible Belt, go figure.

Is this because other countries have higher abortion rates? No. The U.S. is currently holding at around 20 abortions per 1000 women per year, whereas European countries average around 12 per 1000.

The difference between countries where girls and boys don’t become mommies and daddies? SEX EDUCATION IN THE SCHOOLS. The real thing, with pictures and graphs and frank discussions that name body parts. Gross, I know. But apparently effective.

Here’s some more statistics for ya: In a study of 12,000 young adults who’d done the whole “purity pledge” thing, a full 88% said they went ahead and fucked somebody before the walked down the aisle. Another study of 16,000 teens searched for and found no – nada, zip, zilch – difference in the number of sexual partners, STDs and pregnancies between “purity” pledging kids and slutty little sluts (like me at seventeen).

One more statistic? If I haven’t already bored you to tears with all the hard numbers? If U.S. teen-pregnancy, abortion and birth rates were brought down to…let’s say…European levels? You know, where they teach ACTUAL SEX ED?? We’d save a billion dollars a year that at the moment goes to economic losses and health care costs associated with teens getting knocked up. This doesn’t even count the dollars we spend on treating teenaged STDs and their aftermath.

And yes, sometimes kids who are taught how to use contraceptives don’t use them anyway. And sometimes contraceptives fail. And wouldn’t we all be much happier and safer if our kids would just WAIT to become sexually active, preferably until we’re DEAD?? Of course we would. But so long as there’s a better-than-even chance that we can prevent SOME unwanted pregnancies and diseases among our kids, shouldn’t we give it our very best shot? I mean, isn’t that a true no-brainer?

So here’s the deal, Wanna-be Vice Pres. Palin – I support your right to say you don’t want your kids taught how to use a condom in health class. Fine, whatever, pull your child out of class, have him/her take a study hall. But don’t you dare mandate ignorance for MY kids or – more relevantly – the kids down the block whose parents might not know how to teach them proper contraception and disease-prevention.

And while I don’t hold you personally responsible for the choices your daughter and her boyfriend made, I do wonder if maybe a private mother-daughter session with a Trojan Extra-Large and a green banana might’ve prevented poor Bristol from having to marry a guy whose MySpace page stated right up front as recently as two days ago that he DOESN’T WANT CHILDREN. (Wow…I’m rooting for your grandbaby-to-be to have a loving, supportive home life, but really? Not looking good. Hope you’ll have lots of time and love to give the poor thing…oh, wait…you might be busy running the country, huh? Oh, well. I’m sure everything will turn out fine for the little guy or girl, so long as he/she grows up to understand that “purity is power.”)

In closing, allow me to point out that in the larger scheme of things, if MY teenaged daughter is sexually active, and YOUR teenaged daughter is sexually active, but only YOUR daughter gets knocked up? I WIN.

I’ll take my victory lap on the day my daughter graduates med school without a baby on her hip.