Scrawny Broads On The World's Fashion Catwalks

“What becomes alarming is when you see bones and start counting ribs.”
Linda Wells, Editor Allure a beauty magazine




Frankly, I don't understand why it's taken so long, but the fashion folks in Spain, and hopefully now in Brittan, have finally noticed that there ain't a hell of lot a meat on some of those gaunt babes strutt'in down the fashion catwalks in the world's big cities. With that in mind, the Spanish fashion organization, the Pasarela Cibeles, decided to ban those with a BMI (body mass index) of less than 18 from competition. In brief, “ Organizers of the Spanish event said they wanted models to project ‘an image of beauty and health’ and shun a gaunt, emaciated look” (AP news, 16 September 2006).

Spurred into action by the Spanish example, the British Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell, asked the British fashion world to follow the Spanish example. Damn, it actually looked like reason might just win the day, but no! Spurred on, I’m sure, by monetary considerations, the British elected not to do so. The bony babes were everywhere in evidence at the English “fashion walk.” (New York Times, 21 September 006)

To be honest about it, I don't make a regular habit outta watchin' those pretty spectacles; but when I have taken notice, I couldn't really tell if the distorted sashin' and swayin' they did as they traversed the fashion runway was some perverted scarecrow like attempt at a sexy walk; or if in fact, they were on the verge of passin' out and about to fall, bony ass over tea kettle, into the crowd of fashion onlookers--who didn't always look a hell of a lot healthier either, the onlookers that is.

Gotta be somethin' wrong with people who sit and oooh and ahhh over that kinda stuff. The psychedelic people, the shrinks, probably got some fancy name for it, but I'll be damned if I know what it is. In terms of the factors motivating the fashion world, I don’t think we have to wonder, and I do have a word for it; it’s greed, not altruism driving their decisions.

Now if you think my concern about one or more of them passin’ out is a little over the top, just you remember that skinny little babe who did pass out after being crowned pretty miss whatever at one of your major international beauty pageants a little less than a couple months ago. When that newly crowned beauty dropped over--fainted right there on international prime time TV--some timid souls from the journalistic community wondered if maybe she hadn’t been getting enough to eat, but she promptly assured everybody that she had; she said it was just the excitement of the moment that knocked her over. Ya, sure it was! The anorexic little shit probably hadn’t had a decent Big Mac in a month of Sundays. Fact is she’d probably been loadin’ up on carrot juice and celery sticks dipped in ice water, and there just isn’t enough octane in that stuff to keep a body goin.’

Only a society with a badly distorted, warped set of values holds up an unhealthy standard of female beauty for all to admire; and, in the case of highly impressionable young girls, a standard they foolishly try to emulate. Many of them sacrificing their health, as they get caught up in the destructive grip of anorexia nervosa. The concern briefly reelected in the Madrid/London fashion news has dissipated like an early morning haze. The scrawny, bony, broads continue to flounce up and down those fashion catwalks and to hell with the rib counters.

What the hell, chill out! If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em. Porked up Americans will continue to put their big and getting bigger fat assess on the old couch; fire up that talking plasma HDTV wall; all the while grabbing ever bigger fists full of chips & brats to be washed down with cold beer sucked right outta the can. Heaven!

Reflections on Polls and The November Election

A spate of recent national opinion polls and several political pundits are suggesting ever more confidently that the Democrats are about to acquire power once again in Washington. Some are talking about the restoration of our hallowed system of checks and balances and holding out hope that Congress will once again exercise it’s historic oversight function. I’m not so sanguine. In spite of good poll numbers this election’s outcome is not a done deal, and there is reason to be concerned in spite of the polls that consistently reflect a resurgence of the Democratic party.

Generally, I don't think most people realize how grossly skewed the US political system really is; the system distortions are real and explain why, of the 435 seats up for election, there are only 20 to 35 competitive races; that’s true even though virtually all polls show a clear and consistent preference for a change. On a generic ballot, Democrats currently lead by a comfortable margin.

The reality is that there are structural and political distortions in the system that militate against change. From one election cycle to the next the overwhelming majority of congressional seats are never really in play. The distortions that insulate members of congress from competitive races are related to the basic character of the electoral system itself, the proportional system of representation mandated by the Constitution for the House of Representatives, and the guarantee that each state regardless of size, shall have two senators. Because of constitutional limits upon the size of the House of Representatives, i.e., 435 members, it is necessary to reapportion the representation in that body as the population grows. With the progression of time, most of the members of the House represent an ever growing number of people. The representatives from the Western states represent an exception; their constituencies get ever smaller.

It is a little noticed fact in the nation as a whole the western states are losing people; they are emptying out. Yet, they are guaranteed at least one representative no matter how low their population numbers drop; this represents the cause of one of the system distortions mentioned earlier, a distortion that dilutes the democratic character of our government. The people in North Dakota with two US Senators and one member of the House, on a per capita basis, have far great representation, and therefore political influence, than do the people of virtually any other state in the nation. The western states have, over the last 50 to 75 years, been declining in numbers relative to what’s happening in the rest of the country. North Dakota’s population peaked way back in the early 1930's and has been in a steady decline every since.

Consider the disparity; the 37 million people living in California are represented by two US Senators as are the less than one million people living in North Dakota, Wyoming, or any of several of those Western empties. It is because of problems of this nature that a presidential candidate, Al Gore for example, can win the popular vote and not win the election. Though this has happened several times in US history, it is destined to happen more often in the future given the population trends in the West and the reality of the electoral system we are stuck with. Given the conservative nature of the Western red state voters, conservative politics has power and influence far beyond what the population numbers would justify.

Make no mistake about it; the political reality of this situation makes the one man one vote concept irrelevant or merely illusory. The important point is not the fact the there is an historic population shift going on, the emptying out of the Western states; there is, but rather the process of redistricting is a political process that is designed to protect incumbent from one party or the other. In essence, Congressional seats are not unlike Federal Judgeships, lifetime appointments, though technically through an election process and not by appointment as are judgeships. The long history of gerrymandering in American politics has left us with a legacy of Congressional representation that is fundamentally not representative of the people as a whole.

Paul Krugman wrote a piece recently that illustrates this point: “The key point is that African-Americans, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic, are highly concentrated in a few districts. This means that in close elections many Democratic votes are, as political analysts say, wasted — they simply add to huge majorities in a small number of districts, while the more widely spread Republican vote allows the G.O.P. to win by narrower margins in a larger number of districts.”

Krugman correctly concluded: “No wonder, then, that until a few months ago many political analysts argued that the Republicans would control the House for the foreseeable future, because only a perfect political storm could overcome the G.O.P. structural advantage” (New York Times 13 October 2006).

Under normal circumstances reapportionment of the US House of Representative takes place at ten year intervals keeping in sync with the 10 year US census data collected. Political considerations, gerrymandering, have always influenced the redistricting process; Tom DeLay did not invent that bit of institutionalized, structural corruption, but he did use that process in an unprecedented., brazen power grab in the US House by encouraging the newly elected Republican legislature in Texas to ignore the 10 year redistricting cycle and to redraw the recently redrawn congressional districts for the avowed purpose of sending more Republican Congressmen to Washington and thereby increasing his power.

Without question the lines were gerrymandered in Texas to insure that Republicans would replace Democrats in the US Congress, and they did. To be sure, DeLay stands charged with numerous legal violations in connection with these actions, but the fact remains, when the Texas redistricting case was taken before the US Supreme Court, the Court upheld the idea that Congressional boundaries could be redrawn more frequently than allowed by the historic ten year census cycle.

The Supreme Court has in essence institutionalized a process that undermines the notion of one man, one vote. There is now clear legal precedent for politicians from whatever party to further corrupt the representative character of our government by redistricting every time political power shifts in a state legislature.


Historically, people with money, usually wealthy conservatives, have done everything imaginable, including means legal and extralegal, to keep the “hoi polloi” away from the ballot box, the recent election irregularities in Florida and later in Ohio come immediately to mind. Couple that effort with the fact that many, perhaps most, working people of whatever class are generally so caught up in the business of living, of surviving; they just don’t have time to deal with the myriad complexities that underlie most political issues. In modern America, the whole democratic notion of government by the people, for the people and of the people is largely a fiction passed along by naive high school civics teachers. The Swift Boat attach campaigns associated with the Lee Atwater/Karl Rove school of politics represent where politics is at in America. Given the complexity of the issues confronting voters and the many wedge issues introduced to divide and further confuse who knows where how this election will turn out. I’m not too hopeful.

Ever on the watch for ya,
Davy Crockett

Fair Wisconsin: Hope Is Alive

In the US, the gay marriage issue has not done very well on election day. Indeed, the score currently reads 20-0. Beyond the 20 victories, it is fundamentally true that the victories were overwhelmingly lopsided. With little thought and absolutely no evidence, people seem to feel that the gays are engaged in an effort to destroy the institution of marriage.

To be sure, there are no states where gays have ever waged well supported campaigns to promote gay life styles or even gay marriage; they have merely ask for the equal treatment they deserve as citizens, as human beings. The facts clearly indicate that in those states with laws more sympathetic to civil unions, which include unions involving gays, the actual divorce rate among heterosexuals is lower than it is in those red states associated with religious-conservative, redneck politics such as Oklahoma. So, if there is a relationship between what gays do and heterosexual marriage, it is positive. However, I rather suspect that the differences between the divorce rates in the red vs. the blue states are due to factors other than what gays do or do not do.

In general the comparison between blue state/red state divorce rates, reveals that the rates are actually lower in blue states. For example, liberal old Massachuset, whose state supreme court legalize gay marriages, has a lower divorce rate than self-righteous Oklahoma, but then they have Senator Inhofe too–the last surviving Neanderthal. (Side note: Sen. Inhofe spoke on the Senate floor for 45 minutes last week denying the scientific communities claim that we have a global climate problem. According to Inhofe, the world is actually getting colder. . .so there! Senator Inhofe Chairs the Senate Environment Committee.)

Not withstanding the self-righteous rhetoric associated with the red state moralizers, that divorce rates are higher in the red states should not come as a surprise. Studies of televison viewing behavior have indicated time and again that what those self-righteous folks say in their big churches doesn’t square with what they’re actually doing in their homes. Programs like Sex and the City had a bigger per capita audience in the red states than is the case in the morally corrupt Big Apple. Shame, Shame,. Shame! Again, the evidence also demonstrates that the pornography industry thrives in those states. Frank Rich of the New York Times has written several articles detailing the anomalous contradictions between the rhetoric and the reality of the self-righteous, red state moralizers.


Conservative politicians along with the right-wing preachers publicly profess self-righteous moral convictions that they would zealously fit like a psychiatric straight jacket on the public generally. We must be ever viggilant for they consistently reduce the political process to no more that a shell game designed to deceive. The concept that this is a government of the people, by the people and for the people is alien to their very being.

Make no mistake about it, the gay marriage issue pops up during national and state elections, as it has in 20 states already, because conservative politicians realize that it’s a real red meat issue, that it will crowd out any discussion of issues that really would make a difference in the average persons life: health care, education, the war in Iraq, our growing prison population. We don’t need the fraud, the sham, the hoax basic to the move to amend our state constitution.

I've been supporting Fair Wisconsin, a group working against the amendment, by knocking on doors and the like, hoping to play some small part in turning back this right-wing nonsense. The following excerpt from an Associated Press piece presents a good brief summary of what's happening in several states come the November elections:

"Eight states will vote on ban-gay-marriage amendments in November, following 20 that previously approved such measures. Passage is considered certain in Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee, but gay-rights strategists believe their side is at least competitive in Arizona, Colorado, Virginia and Wisconsin.
"Supporters of banning gay marriage remain confident of victory, but optimism also is high in the ranks of Fair Wisconsin, a coalition fighting the proposed amendment since it surfaced in the Legislature in 2004. Large labor unions, many religious leaders, and top Democratic officials — including Gov. Jim Doyle — have spoken out against the measure.
"This could be the state where we beat this thing," said Fair Wisconsin campaign chief Mike Tate. "I'm not saying it's easy, but we've got the right ingredients on the table."
--David Crary, Associated Press 30 September 2006

I heard on WPR news Friday 29 September, that Wisconsin is the only Big Ten school that does not extend full employee benefits to significant others of whatever type. Indeed, as reported in the same news cast, virtually all major corporations extend benefits to couples without regard to gender. To my surprise, the additional cost is considered modest, incidental. Beyond the question of basic fairness is the fact that many highly qualified, extremely talented people will not want to come here to work and live, not when they can do better elsewhere--as they can. There is a reason so many major corporations provide ALL employees with spousal benefits, and it is not because corporations are by nature altruistic! It just makes good business sense to higher the best people without regard to race, creed, gender or sexual preference.

However, this is fundamentally not an economic issue; it's a question of basic human rights. I personally don't want to sit and watch as a whole group of people is systematically persecuted by the dominate culture; the Bill of Rights became an important part of the US Constitution specifically to protect minorities from subjugation by an abusive majority. On election day in November, Wisconsin citizens must make sure that our state constitution does not permit majority tyranny in this state.

If you do nothing else, vote against the proposed constitutional amendment; it's a repugnant provision that is totally alien to any idea of democracy that protects minority rights.

People who don't like the idea that gays want to link up in a state of marriage should be made aware that in Wisconsin, under current statutes, gay marriage is illegal. I think that's unfortunate, but it's true.
In the entire history of this state, there has never been an occasion when we, the citizens of the state, have repealed a constitutional amendment. . .once it's there, it's there forever. Lest we make a terrible mistake, caution is in order.

I've never been able to predict the future, but I do know that one day one of my family members may be involved in a gay relationship. I shudder to think that, because of decisions being made today, they and thousands like them will be forever relegated to 2nd class citizenship.

I clearly recollect Vice President Cheney's remarks on the subject during his Vice Presidential debate with Sen. Joe Lieberman. Though Cheney is not one of my heroes, he has been humbled by the fact that his daughter is involved in a gay relationship. To my knowledge, the good Lord doesn't tell anyone in advance whether he or she's going to be this or that in a sexual sense. We all take the cards we're played, and I am very uncomfortable with the thought that we might just be stacking the deck against those, who by the luck of the draw, just happen to be gay!

It is my hope that on election day we will honor our historic tradition of progressive politics in this state and vote down this attempt to institutionalize the discrimination this amendment represents. Let's celebrate our diversity as one of our strengths; this is not a time to be humbled by right-wing religious/political nonsense.

Ever on the watch for ya,
Davy Crockett