Happy Holidays

There. A post. Back from the hometown surviving yet another yule. The LIERAQ sale's over. A new year on its way. New shirts galore on Progresswear. That's a promise.

LIERAQ Sale Extended

I've spent the better part of a week laboriously e-mailing around 800 of our friends, family, clients, collectors, buyers and the 125 or so people who've actually asked for any spam from us to tell them that we're having a sale, $5.00 off all LIERAQ gear, extended now through December 15th. It's our first sale, in honor of our first anniversary. And in anticipation of our pull out of Iraq, be that two months or twenty years.

We've got an electorate who feels that now it's our turn to declare a mandate, though, as with Bush's two elections, the use of the M word is most inappropriate. Yet many feel we've earned capital and can borrow Georgie's line and announce to the world that we're going to spend that there capital. Voters, bloggers and grassroots groups are already launching campaigns of accountability, promising to hold the collective feet of the newly elected to the fire. If they won't give us a nice, juicy, bloody impeachment, they can at least ensure that serious hearings into how and why we went into Iraq will take place. And soon, one can only hope.

Polling since the mid-terms shows overwhelming support for impeachment should it be concluded that Bush lied about Iraq. He did, and with any luck this will be our Watergate. Jack Abramoff's in jail. Tom DeWho is all but invisible on the political landscape. In what seemed like mere weeks the Repulic party (to paraphrase Mr. Bush) self destructed and deflated before our eyes as a groundswell of thinking Americans rose to vote, the war in Iraq their number one issue. Gay marriage, stem cell research, abortion, not even immigration came close. For once, the values voter was taking a truly moral stance.

It gives one hope that perhaps there is a bit of justice in the world and that this time, it just might prevail. Yet who is going to tell that to the mourners of the 100,000 to 600,000 Iraqis no longer walking the planet due to our folly? We've buried 2,919 of our own as of today. Watching the hearings and coming to terms at last with the truth about why their sons and daughters aren't coming home will be painful for these people. And for those who stood silent witnessing the lies, or cheered on the march to war, their silent shame will be palpable.

LIERAQ. $5.00 OFF SALE EXTENDED THROUGH DECEMBER 15TH.

Vice President Cheney's Gay Daughter Mary is Pregnant

by CARIOFTHEVALLEY
Across the street from the Market East train station in Philadelphia is a Loew's Hotel with one of those scrolling news displays on the corner of the building (à la New York City but poorly executed and out of context). As I walked to work this morning I saw the above headline scrolling by and had to laugh out loud. Not that it's funny that she's pregnant - assuming she wanted to be then it's great. The headline itself struck me as funny. How do you convey the import of such a happening in 7 words or fewer? President Cheney's Gay Daughter Mary is Pregnant. I question needing her name in the bit. Does her name contribute meaning? Does he have more than one gay daughter? Why should we care? Well, no doubt Dick cares. According to today's New York Times:

Lea Anne McBride, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cheney, said the vice president and his wife, Lynne Cheney, were “looking forward with eager anticipation” to the baby’s birth, which is expected this spring and will bring to six the number of grandchildren the Cheneys have.

Mr. Cheney’s office would not provide details about how Mary Cheney became pregnant or by whom, and Ms. Cheney did not respond to messages left at her office and with her book publisher, Simon & Schuster.

Nice spin, Dick.

A very nicely written take on this news and how it could make a positive difference in gay rights comes from Thomas de Zengotita writing for the Huffington Post:

That's why this little event in the second family matters. Dick and Lynn love their daughter. She's an actual real person to them. They will stand by her, as they should, and the hell with ideology.

But what Dick and Lynn don't get is that all human beings in the world are connected to the particular people they love in the same way. What the politics they represent ignores is the meaning of that particular, yet universal, love. That ignorance allows them to countenance the slaughter of innocents in the name of abstractions.

Of course the debate about gay marriage, fueled by this serendipitous news, will be top news today and I think it will be interesting to see how the Bush administration distances itself from the VP's own daughter as it asserts that "alternative" relationships should not be recognized or bring forth offspring. Let the headlines fly.

Michael Moore, come get your shirts.

I met Michael Moore in the lobby of Comedy Central this past Valentine's day where I was attending a taping of the Daily Show. Next to Stephen Colbert, Jon's the most brilliant man in America. I refuse to engage in the John/Paul who's hipper conversation. It's apples and oranges and I love 'em both.

Both the Daily Show and The Colbert Report are brilliant satire, demanding an informed and impassioned audience. Blue Collar Comedy Tour this is not. Fake news has faux news running scared. I told Howard Dean last spring that satire will save us. I'd just read Art Spiegelman's article in Harpers entitled "Drawing Blood," in which he published and rated the infamous Danish cartoons by effectiveness and likelihood that they would bring death to any of the poor cartoonists in hiding.

For years I've been telling anyone who would listen that satire is a weapon of truth and a slayer of truthiness.™ From Ancient Rome to Daumier to Thomas Nast to Will Rodgers to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, satire will expose the emperors' new wardrobes and clarity will win in the end.

Michael Moore is a very, very tall man. He's not as wide as he might appear to be on television. Either that or he's lost a lot of weight. He had to duck to make it under the bargain basement metal detector. I looked at him with the shock of recognition one has upon spotting any celebrity and consulted no fewer than four people around me to be sure that it was he.

I nervously approached him and showed him a Progresswear brochure which he carefully read, laughing more than once. At that moment I realized that if I could make Michael Moore laugh I must be doing something right. He said he loved the slogans and thought they were beautifully designed and happily signed the cover. I said "I'd like to send you some shirts." He said "why don't you just give me some?" I paused, trying to discern what he thought I'd said. “Did you think I said that I'd like to sell you some shirts?" Apparently he did. I laughed and clarified that I'd send a truckload for his entire crew if he'd just let me know where to deliver them. I was so nervous that I didn't think to give him the brochures I’d frantically printed to give to Adam Chodikoff, the Daily Show producer who generously provided our VIP seats. Instead I gave Michael a very corporate looking business card that I'm sure he promptly lost. He told me his crew was in New York working on his latest project and they’d had an especially rough day. He was treating them to a night on the town which commenced with VIP seats at the show.

It was a solid Daily Show that night. Jon seemed truly flattered that Michael and his crew had shown up and introduced him before the show. I sat facing him trying to discern what size t-shirts to order for him. In the blink of an eye the show was over, the elated crowd reluctantly making their exodus to the New Radicals' "You Get What You Give."

Michael Moore's face shows up on a few other t-shirt companies' sites, photographed with the gleeful entrepreneur at his side, knowing that this single picture will garner them sales. So I'm hoping he might be a good sport given that his exact words were "I like these. I REALLY like these." Sending him the shirts isn't an option. I need that photo. Please, Michael. Help out a fellow Midwesterner.

A friend gave me a contact at Michael's production studio, whom I called. A young man answered who wasn't too interested in yet another t-shirt vendor trying to put some XLT shirts on the sizable torso of our nation's greatest political documentarian cum billboard. He politely but firmly said "just send me an e-mail with the info, ok?" He gave me an address that got kicked back.

I’ve been working up the courage to call again. Mike, let me know where to send those shirts. If you could humor us by sitting for our photographer Tony Ward, we'd be all the more indebted.