mimi in NY

Crescent Heights

2009-06-03T16:13:00.000-04:00

In some ways, I suppose, our addiction is not just to a substance but to the exotic conditions surrounding that substance: the intricacy of plotting where to meet the dealer at what time to least arouse suspicion, the adrenalin of finding a liquor store across town so that you don’t bump into someone from rehab, the ambrosiac taste of a beer in a dive bar at the precise moment some fat idiot drones ‘Keep coming back…’ in a striplit community center, balancing his styrofoam cup of coffee between quivering thighs. Similarly, we become addicted not just to the affect of the drug, but to the grandiosity of our own sublime, majestic tragedy: the sunlight filtering through blinds, lighting up dust motes settling on skin ashy and gray, stretched taut against a hollow skull, a body beaten, defeated and whimpering as the comedown grips hold. Vile and loathful we may be, but there is something about what others view as pitiful, as the lowest of the low, as filthy and execrable, repulsive and inhuman, diseased and outcast, that appeals to us passionately, and once we have glimpsed the quickest path of descent, we are racing down it gaily like children on some grand 1950s adventure story - Biggles does Blow, Nancy Drew and the Missing Crack Pipe - at once hating, loathing, despising ourselves, at once adamant that nothing in sobriety could ever taste quite as delicious as our own spectacular, superb self-destruction.

Girl, Undressed

2009-06-02T19:54:00.002-04:00

'No Man's Land' came out in paperback - but it's got a new cover and a new title. Join my fbook group!

I'm writing a script of 'Alice in Wonderland' at the moment, and it looks like a kid's book I'm adapting into a movie is just about to get greenlit. Good times.

fate

2009-03-26T22:38:00.003-04:00

I have this friend, Bob. He's sixty or so. I met Bob in Colorado working on the Obama campaign. I didn't like him as he smelled and always had his ass hanging out his pants and kept going on about Roosevelt and giggling a lot. But then we became friends and I drove him everywhere in my goddamn money-draining fucking Mercedes and we used to scrabble through the office to find quarters until we had enough for a packet of cigarettes. Bob still calls me occasionally. Last time he called it was sometime after christmas and he was drunk and holed up in a motel with some woman called Shanice he'd just met. He seemed happy. Bob had a sweet deal running weed and mushrooms to Chicago and San Francisco. He grew them for some drug dealers in Sonoma County. Then he got caught with 20 grand of cash stinking of weed trying to board an Amtrak train in Union Station. The DEA confiscated the money and Bob was too scared to go back and tell the drug dealers he'd lost all the money so he joined the Clinton campaign, and then the Obama campaign. Bob was someone who was always fucking happy, you know those people? Always goddamn smiling away despite sitting in a pile of shit. I really wish I had that ability. Somedays it's OK and I accept there's nothing I can do except take the sofas people offer me, and the money, and keep writing the novel and hoping something will happen so I can go back to LA. But most of the time I'm anxious and pissed and I can't eat and there's nothing to do all day except stew in words and go to AA meetings with a bunch of tattooed, transgender hipsters, who are pretty awesome, but they'd be more awesome if they were in LA.

There's something to be said for not struggling against fate, but my question is, when is not struggling against what seems to be fate, instead simply giving the fuck up? It would be awesome to be happy like Bob, but I don't want to be happy with a bottle of Jack, a motel room and some chick I picked up that morning in the free clinic. I can't figure out if that's wrong or right.

Dune

2009-01-31T10:15:00.003-05:00

We spend the day in a taxi shuttling between Giza and Sakara for six hours with a wrinkled little driver who snickers audibly at our stupidity. The scene demands I laugh at Donovan as he receives an important gift from me. By the end of the day my laugh has become a hideous, emphysemic croak from all the fumes consumed through the window of the cab. I crawl into bed with advanced lung cancer, and sleep badly, gnawed on by money worries and paranoia of yet another eviction of some unknown kind, perhaps from Clive, the Hotel Lialy, or The Godfather, who can't evict me as I don't live in his house, but knowing him, he'd have a good try anyway.

I email evil roommate the next day to ask if I could get the rest of my rent back for January seeing as he has, in all fairness, evicted me and I could do with the cash (for online shopping). He tells me to fuck off, so I set my Liverpudlian family on the case. Scousers enjoy arguments and are like vicious, abused little dogs, particularly with money matters: the more one kicks at us, the more we sink our teeth into your wallet. My father emails triumphantly to report that evil roommate hung up on him after a threat of legal action. I like to see father so youthful and invigorated by dissension. I feel in many ways he would have an awfully dull retirement without me to liven it up.

My mood is foul. Cairo is cold and dirty and stressful. I grunt in monotones at Gabe and Donovan for two days, and they, sweet boys, try and appease me with chocolate and sympathy, but to no avail. It is only after a night of beer and a morning of yoga that my chemical cocktail coalesces into an uneasy harmony of Margarita-proportions, and I feel less suicidal, although still anxious to return home to California.

Cairo is a foul place. The people are nice, but still, Cairo itself is a bit shit. It attracts a certain kind of tourist: the common and the stupid. I am constantly amazed at the number of white women walking around in see-thru, skimpy outfits, seemingly oblivious to the fact they are in a Muslim country. Walking rape, I mutter when I see these women. Whores. Bitches. Gabe and Donovan look at me in consternation but I remind them I am a writer and merely a cipher for the prevailing emotions and attitudes of those around me, and in a sense, devoid of any free-will or determination of my own, and thus accusations of misogyny are completely unfounded. Also it's kind of like being a Jew. You can't be mean about Jews unless you are one, and then it's totally allowed. Ditto bitches, sorry, women.

We went to Giza to shoot today. Walking rape with a visible g-string sauntered past and the gods obviously disapproved as a raging sand storm whipped up in furious objection, and we were forced to retreat to KFC and the comfort of online shopping for consumer items we neither needed nor could afford. Cairo brings out the worst in me and my ailing credit card. Because of the sandstorm, shooting has been postponed for several days and it looks like I can't fly back to LA until Thursday, rather than Tuesday as originally planned. I hate indie filmmaking. I like order and planning and a big fuck-off trailer filled with organic foods and hot beverages and people to talk to, not a desolate corner of Egypt and public transport home.

The week stretches before me, empty, desolate, pocked only with visits to pyramids to shoot painful scenes in sandstorms, and the lure of online shopping outlets. The insanity creeps closer everyday. My editor at Penguin emails and informs me I should take a writing course with "people I really respect," not "effete snobs". I can't think of anything more conducive to self-loathing and writer's block than a room filled with a bunch of earnest, poetry-reading wankers all slathering for a chance to rip my prose to shreds and reduce me to a blubbering, self-harming, broken mess. I thank her for the advice, and steer my reply onto a different, more interesting subject. Me.

Have not heard from Clive for weeks, months, years, since Tuesday. I fear he is plotting my eviction.

The shoot rolls on, relentless and unceasing. I wonder vaguely if I really needed the black, shiny, lame yoga pants and whitening toothpaste, but fortunately I registered for free shipping because of the size of my purchases.

Cairo has been a learning experience. I feel I know myself after Cairo. It is a horrendous acquaintance, and I am looking forward to the selfish oblivion of California once again.

Children with Moobs

2009-01-27T14:44:00.003-05:00

I arrive in Cairo. Predictably, given the nature of indie filmaking, it turns out Mr Gabriel Fleming, Director, has not yet written the script.

We sit in a restaurant over chicken shawarma and debate possible plot options.

"So there's a scene where you and Donovan have to escape these two guys, and I can't figure out how you would do that..."

"Banana peel," I suggest helpfully. "Potholes. Hiding under a burqa. We both get dressed in burqa. I scream 'RAPE' and point at our pursuers and the milling crowd mob them in outrage while we slip quietly away."

"Don't be silly," says Gabe briskly. "This is Egypt. They'd probably turn around and stone you."

We all snicker and then pretend it wasn't funny because, let's face it, it was a rampantly racist joke and Gabriel should know better.

"Chunky children. Children with moobs."

"That doesn't work with the plot Ruth!"

"No, I was looking at the fat kids on that table."

An array of plump blond children wibble into the restaurant and shriek delightedly as they surround an empty table. They quiver like finely set jello.

"Shut the fuck up, I'm trying to eat!" I scream before I can stop myself.

Gabe and Donovan look at me in horror. I realize my personality problems have become more pronounced. I am plagued by paranoia and misanthropy at the moment, not helped by the constant stares you get wandering the streets of Cairo as a white woman, even when every inch of you is covered. Cairo is like a grimy Paris, full of sheeshas and dodgy mustached men and skinny dogs with curly tails. Tall twenties buildings are faded and dirty, ramshackle iron-wrought elevators shuddering and sighing to a halt in between floors. I get up after a sleepless night and wander down to hotel reception, where I sip treacly Turkish coffee in between two burqa-clad matrons and watch an episode of American Gladiators from 1987. Tracy Hutton from Texas wins the elimination round. We sit there, transfixed. The lady from reception, wearing a gaudy hijab, glides over and touches my sleeve, a gentle smile playing upon her lips.

"You must leave room. You can stay in friend's room."

"But we're not married!"

"So sorry. You go."

I am constantly being evicted. This new eviction sinks me into a deeper, ash covered gloom, shrouded by cheap cigarette smoke, heavy lidded eyes peeping over beige knitted cable sweaters, peeking and prying and watching. There's no privacy in Cairo. It's too gray. Gabe and I shuffle around town to find me a new room, and I think longingly of Clive, my infidelitous actor, and sleeping away comfortably on his sofa while his dog licks my face and he ignores me and leers at on-screen large breasted hot women.

I sleep in the new room all afternoon, and awake to a huge mosquito supping away on my blood.

Sporting a new itchy red spot on the side of my face, we regroup and go out to dinner at a fast food place which sells some kind of macaroni with spicy sauce. There seems to be a trend for the owners of such establishments to commission faux-oil-painting airbrushed portraits of themselves sporting seedy, masturbatory grins upon their faces. These are hung at all convenient wall spaces, so you are constantly being watched by multiples of lairy man as you eat. I assume the pose of one of these men, fat grin, money eyes, leaning on thumb and index finger, and a lady catches my eye and giggles appreciatively.

Thank god we start filming tomorrow. Insanity is near. Chunky children, children with moobs.

Cock.

Inauguration Day

2009-01-20T15:53:00.002-05:00

I avoided it. I couldn't go and that made me sad, so I listened to Public Radio and shed a little tear instead.

Enough schmaltz. The week has been taken up with moving, packing and running annoying errands around LA. I finally got to let loose at the weekend with a trip to the Chateau avec Le Godfather. We were immediately besieged by his boyfriend's pussy-posse, who unbeknowst to me, bombarded his boyfriend, who is currently shooting a movie in Rome, with texts such as 'Come back to LA, he's with that slut again', 'Your relationship is in danger' etc. Now as fond as I am of the old codger, the idea that I'm sleeping with him is pretty repulsive. Yes, I am extremely good at talking to old men and making them think they're attractive by laughing at their crap jokes, but I'm not so good at bedding them, so I don't. Yeurgh.

I went to Malibu at the weekend for a drink to get over the trauma and met an interesting blond lady who told me she used to be an escort and once got paid 3k for sucking (insert famous black comedian's name here) dick at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Apparently his pseudonym for such encounters was Curtis Koplin.

I am blatantly in the wrong profession.

I spent the week after this plunged into depression again. The worst thing about my depression is it takes two forms: self-pitying sloth, or self-destructive mania. I'm currently on a mania ride and have managed to insult a variety of very lovely people who I have friend crushes on, and now probably don't want to know me.

So I moved to Venice to look after Clive's dog and house. It's very fucking nice. I wish Clive would marry me, but I'm too young to be yoked to matrimony to infidelitous actors. I am still at my prime 'other woman' stage of life, as proven by the slut comments which consistently surround me. If I got laid as much as everyone thought I did, my vagina would be the size of the Chunnel by now.

In 48 hours I fly to Egypt to finish shooting the India movie. I shall keep you informed of my actions and fuck-ups.

India

2008-12-19T16:43:00.004-05:00

It looks like I'll be in India for the first half of January to be in my friend Gabe's indie movie. As I have 23 bucks in my bank account, he's paying for my flight and accommodation and visa fees, thank fuck. God knows how I'm going to make it through January with no income (bills! bills! bills!) but this is far too good an opportunity to pass up - particularly as xmas is gonna be miserable and poor this year. I'm going absolutely bonkers working in a bar six nights a week and making dreadful money right now, so fuck it, I'm going to India.

If you would like to contribute to the 'Pay a Poor Brit's January Rent so she can enjoy India' fund, feel free to click on the paypal link.

Happy Holidays....

Skylight Books

2008-12-11T18:16:00.000-05:00

I went into Skylight Books on Vermont in Los Feliz to sign some copies of the book today. Go buy them!

Recessionary Tales

2008-12-10T17:12:00.004-05:00

I arrived back in Los Angeles to find my 37 year-old 'resting actress' roommate had moved her 19 year old boyfriend into the apartment. Normally, this would not bother me, particularly since I already knew the little twat from when he'd stayed there in the summer for a couple of weeks. However, it became apparent ageing pussy had induced a degenerative effect upon his personality, and sweet 19 year-old fresh-out-of-the-midwest Marlow had now turned into an American-Apparel adorned arrogant hipster cunt. Marlow and resting actress' favorite pastime had become slowly and methodically turning a decent apartment into a cesspit of filth, hairballs, dirty dishes and unemployment checks. They wafted around in dead people's clothes purporting to have weighty discussions about art and movies and really talking absolute bollocks, eating my food and discussing their feces over breakfast ("Homes, come check this floater out"). They looked at me pitifully as I emerged from yet another chain-smoking session on the verandah, and tched lightly if I ever reached for the bottle, which I did infrequently now as I couldn't even afford a fucking Corona. The apartment had become a groundhog day of hipster judgment, and despite the kindness of resting actress, I couldn't deal with their combined craziness. They had bad vibes dude.

Yet again it was time to move on. As I was now unemployed, still waiting on several delayed checks from newspapers and absolutely bankrupt from hospital bills, auto-repair bills, overdraft charges and insurance pay-outs (Flat in London - now 10k to fix, fuckers), moving out didn't seem too likely. Until the boys next door asked me to move in with them. Two weeks back I grabbed my two suitcases, a borrowed mattress and two stolen chairs, and shuffled across the hallway to Flat 4 instead, leaving hipster hell stewing gently in filth behind me.

The unemployment thing was still getting to me. I had forty bucks in my bank account and so I tried various normal jobs until I got my freelance checks in the post. I canvassed for a homeless charity, still riding high off the Obama campaign, but discovered I had a deep-seated aversion to motivational talks and bearded wannabes waffling on about how great they were for giving up their time to help homeless people (but you get PAID you wankers, I wanted to cry. It's not selfless if someone hands you a fucking check at the end of the month). I hated knocking on doors asking people who couldn't pay their own mortgages for money for a shelter, knowing that 40% of the money I collected was going to the bearded hippies to pay for their fucking ganja. I ditched it, after a week. They didn't pay enough to keep me alive, but they paid too much for my conscience to feel good about taking donations.

I worked at a bikini bar for a few weeks. Good decor, nice people, shit money, goodbye. I started volunteering for clinical trials, swallowing vast quantities of pills for 100 bucks a week. I offered my eggs up online, but doubted privately whether anyone would want these defunct infertile fuckers. I fineagled my way into a gig interviewing some actors for Hello magazine in the UK, and spent a day clutching a voice recorder watching photo-shoots and interrogating kids about having famous parents, and I forgot, for a time, that my life was back in Silverlake freelancing for shit money, and that it wasn't this round of mansions and restaurants with beautiful people in Malibu. The photographer I worked with, Sam, brought his friend Sean along for the shoot. It turned out Sean was a paparazzi, and he offered to take me out for a few days on the job.

Sam, Sean and I cruised along Santa Monica in a blacked-out SUV clutching DV cameras and telephoto lenses. We picked our way through Bel Air and Beverly Hills, staked out hotels and restaurants and addresses in Brentwood and Hollywood and Los Feliz. We papped Dustin Hoffman, Sigourney Weaver, Jennifer Aniston, Jason Segel, Helena Bonham-Carter, Lisa Marie Presley, Matthew Broderick, Emma Watson, Noel Gallagher and I forget who else. I sat in the Chateau Marmont waiting for an up-and-coming actor to meet with a more famous actor one day, sat outside Shutters Hotel all morning for a rockstar to emerge the next. We followed people, hid in public bathrooms and bushes, behind walls and in the backs of cars, and then sometimes when some muppet Pap came along and made it too obvious, we jumped right on in and got down to hosing some inane celeb in a gang-bang of flashes and shots, wide angle lenses blinking and clicking ferociously, tempers short and vicious.

Sam and Sean were hilarious. They had morals, sure. "No sneaky-beaky's under the skirt," Sean used to say primly, but you knew, after a day or so, that when the hunt was on those morals would trickle away, and in that moment when the prey was found all that mattered was getting blood, regardless of how much it might hurt them or us. It was interesting, being so hated for a few days. A band-member of Oasis saw me with the paps and told me to fuck off in a voice dripping with hatred and venom like I was vermin, and I didn't have the heart to tell him I was just there for the ride, writing about this shit for a magazine article. I guess when you're in that frame of mind where you hate life and you don't give a fuck, doing a job which instantly turns you into scum, - well it's fine isn't it. It's exactly where you want to be, exactly where you should be, exactly where you deserve to be. Being a pap for a week was perfect, in this shit black-hole of a recession.

And now I'm back to 40 dollars in my bank account, all these fucking 'projects' in the works, and meetings, and smile, smile, smile, pretend everything's OK, when of course it's not because you have bills to pay and you can't afford to even eat, and everyone around you is losing their jobs and their homes and you're just staving it off for as long as you can in the City of Angels, and all you can think is fuck, let me cash in some of my good karma now, please?

not writing because...

2008-12-02T11:58:00.002-05:00

... am dealing with hellish bad luck and barely keeping my head above water right now. Kind of sucks actually, but thanks for asking - there's nothing anyone can do unless they wanna give me some journo work or about 8k to pay off all the bad luck debts (flat in London now flooded, bottom dropped off my car in Utah, more illness etc etc - fun stuff)

Ugh.

FAT - 11/01/08

2008-11-09T16:44:00.005-05:00

I wrote this one evening a few days before E-day. I'm still emotional, ecstatic and trying to get to grips with such a phenomenal week, but in the meantime, chew on this....

--------

I am blissfully ignorant of most of the criticisms levied against me on the internet by virtue of never googling myself. However, my Campaign for Change colleagues are far more curious than I, and late last night after we’d data-entried the GOTV canvassing and calling, they laughingly drew my attention to the furore surrounding my ‘ignorant, hate-filled screed’ for The Guardian earlier this year. They’d found it by googling ‘Ruth Fowler bitch’ which I found mildly entertaining, particularly given that the subject of the article was ‘Women on the Net’, with a particular focus on the sexist and unpleasant comments thrown at women who write on the internet.

Now the article of mine that ‘Feministing’ described as “obscene” and “hateful” was certainly rude, obnoxious and insulting. It was a rant, it was an attack, and I deliberately employed insulting language as I wanted to take an extreme stance on what I perceive to be this recent new drive to ‘normalize’ obesity - one of the largest causes of health problems in the western world.

It was, however, NOT a ‘hate-filled screed’ on all ‘overweight’ people as many of the original commentators and Feministing contributors insist. It was a frustrated attack on the absurdity of tackling a growing obesity problem in the western world by ‘accepting’ and ‘normalizing’ fat, sending out a message to new generations that it’s OK to be grossly obese.

My point was made in offensive and cruelly humorous language, but there was a point. We don’t promote heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure and immobility problems as desirable attributes in life, so why should we laud obesity over a healthy attitude towards weight and exercise? I feel strongly about this as the child of parents who are now suffering from life-threatening health problems precisely because of their weight, as are many of my (predominantly grossly overweight) family. A close family member of mine suffered arthritis for years, accentuated by the fact that she was obese. She received two knee replacements and yet never managed to lose the weight afterward and is now practically immobile because she did not exercise after her surgery. She is the first to admit that her attitude towards food and exercise has now compounded health problems that, in turn, were the result of her weight issues, and have consequently made these health problems much worse. Her weight is not the symptom of disease, but the cause of much of her suffering now, while in a vicious circle, at the time she desperately needs to lose weight, she cannot. Another close family member just got diagnosed with weight-related diabetes, on top of high blood pressure and angina. His weight has yo-yo-ed for years, but he is the first to admit he is fat because he likes to eat too much and he does not exercise, predominantly because he now also suffers from gout. His weight has ballooned since the gout worsened. Coincidentally, a friend of his who ran marathons faces the same problems with gout. Both are in their early sixties. His friend’s weight remains relatively stable despite the fact he can no longer run and has to employ gentle exercise instead. Family member's weight has increased.

Once one has compounded health problems to the point where immobility and pain set in, it’s practically impossible to lose the excess fat a person is carrying, even by cutting down on calories. If one can’t move, one can’t expend the extra energy needed to burn excess fat. A sedentary life is a nightmare for overweight people. Once someone hits this point, losing weight becomes extremely, extremely hard.

Now growing up seeing these problems around me, seeing people I care deeply about suffer because of themselves and their attitude toward food and exercise: not just because of poor self esteem, or confidence issues, or childhood sexual abuse, or work-related stress, but because of a lack of willingness to confront their weight issues earlier in life when they had the chance to improve their diet and exercise, has profoundly affected me. I was anorexic for several years as a teenager because I didn’t want to end up like my family members. For years I didn’t enjoy food, did everything I could to avoid it, over-exercised in the middle of the night when no one could see me, and didn’t have a period for three years as a result. I equated food and its enjoyment with greed, a lack of self-control, obesity and ill-health, because this is what I saw in those I loved. It took me many years to re-educate myself before I could enjoy food and have a healthy attitude towards it. I even had to train as a chef and a yoga teacher to reach a healthy balance where I didn’t starve myself. I love exercising, I love my body shape (which, according to one former-anorexic female commentator in a national daily, is comprised of ‘chubby thighs’ and ‘a huge arse’), and ironically for all the haters out there, a big and important part of my self-acceptance has been dancing naked for money for 18 months of my life.

The point is, that to me it’s a symptom of the complete absurdity of political correctness and ego-massaging to send out a message to kids saying to be grossly obese is OK. It’s not. Like I said in my article, it’s not OK to be anorexic, it’s not OK to be enormously obese. Both conditions are life-threatening, and when 66% of American adults are obese, why in gods name are we going around insisting that we be more accepting of these people as if they are an oppressed minority?! Obviously if 66% of Americans are either overweight or obese (I don't know the figures for the UK), the message that it’s OK to be fat is a particularly damaging one, and should be replaced with, not an emphasis on skinnies, on surgery to solve the problem, on liposuction and gastric bypasses and slimfast diets and starvation, but on re-educating the masses on diet and exercise, ensuring that those who don't have the money to join Equinox or shop at Wholefoods know how to make tasty, nutritious food from rice, lentils, daal, some fresh tomatoes - a meal that is financially proportionate to the cheap crap from fast food outlets, but far, far better for your family. I’m not targeting, and never was targeting, anyone who carries a few extra pounds, who has a large butt, who doesn’t weigh the same as Lily Cole, who agonizes over the cellulite and wishes that they could get from a size 14 to a 12. I'm talking people whose weight is posing a serious health risk, and yet the hysteria surrounding this article seemed to suggest I’d planned to round up anyone over a size 14 and send them to Belsen.

I find life pretty absurd, ridiculous and funny, which is why I couched a serious point in flippant and cruel language which was intended to offend by deliberately confronting head-on the kinds of politically correct BS we feed people in order to assuage delicate sensibilities and pretend we’re all tolerant liberals. Obesity is a 20th century condition become a 21st century epidemic that has emerged from the availability of shit to eat, the western world's inability to say no when confronted with plenty, and the ease with which we can offload our own faults onto our emotional stress or our past. It'd be easy for me to say I smoke because I don't think my parents love me and I don't have a boyfriend, but I smoke because I'm addicted to this highly unpleasant and expensive habit and lack the desire to give up. Whether this makes me a low self-esteem sufferer or not, who can tell. It makes me smell like an ashtray and worry about wrinkles, but it's my fault, I admit responsibility for whatever disease I may incur because of it. How is an addiction to over-eating and sedentary living any different to drinking too much alcohol, taking too many drugs, smoking too much? I feel confident enough to say that very few of the clinically obese or very overweight people in the world are this way because of a pre-existing medical condition or their personal genetics. Genes dictate body shape, hereditary diseases, hair color, eye color, whether your boobs are DD’s or teensy A-cups, your ass is non-existent or, like mine, very much in existence. Genes do not dictate that you are unable to choose a salad over the pancakes, eggs, bacon and syrup option at brunch in Denny's. Weight is dictated by calorific intake versus calories burned. It’s impossible for someone to have a gland problem and be 300 pounds if they’re not consuming enough energy to maintain that weight. That's what pisses me off about this ridiculous 'celebration' of being overweight. I don't hate fat people at all, else I'd hate the majority of my family. I don't think fat people are wrong, as I claimed, wrongly and flippantly, in that article. But I do think obese people should not be held up as 'brave', 'role models' and something to aspire to.

I remember watching poor ole Jamie Oliver trying to educate schools about healthy eating and having to contend with a bunch of irate mums feeding their kiddies fries through the school railings at lunchtime. This is the fucked-up world we live in. I certainly don’t want my hypothetical children to grow up in a world which accepts obesity as normal, and not preventable, where the boundaries of what is healthy and what is not changes frequently, not because of medical research but because of public opinion - increasing percentages of fatties, parents who don't want their obese kids to feel weird, clothing companies that regularly change their sizing policies to make people feel slimmer, people who sue fast-food companies for their obesity or heart disease. I want my kids to grow up in a world which takes responsibility for themselves, not offloads problems onto genes, or poverty, or childhood trauma. I want them to have a healthy attitude towards food and exercise, whatever size and shape they turn out, to be mobile and enjoy exercise and sport and food, but never let their lives be dictated by consumption and weight. If they have this, you can guarantee they’re not going to be one of those people lifted out of their death-bed by the fire department.

Another argument levied at me by the ‘Feministing’ crew back in June was that my article dealt primarily with overweight women and not men.

“And finally lets get down to it- she never ONCE mentioned a male example of fat, never used a male pronoun. This isn't about her being disgusted with unhealthy living at all. This is about her dislike of women who defy societal standards of beauty, women who can openly love their bodies, and therefore- her (and society's) need to value women only for their looks and the need to otrasize them if they don't meet ridiculous requirements.” (sic)

This is because I am a woman, I worked in a predominantly weight-obsessed female environment for nearly two years, and because generally, women are obsessed with weight in a way in which men are not. This is not to say I am denying the existence of anorexic or obese men, merely that I have no experience of them other than acquaintance with my family members. Women are the ones who make a carnival of the fact a fat model won a modeling contest, as if she overcame a huge disability more crippling than four or five excess stone (about 100 pounds). It’s women who come up with absurd ads like Dove’s ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ which reminds me of Palin’s comment about ‘real Americans’ so vapid is its content. Presumably anyone who looks like a supermodel is addled and bitter inside, somehow ‘unreal’ because they have been blessed, or more likely, have worked to achieve, a toned and slim body? And amongst these so called 'representative' women, where are the sporty, toned ones? Or the ones we all hate as they're naturally gorgeous and never have to work for it?

Finally, my point with the original article was to shock, to voice all the myths and unpleasantness that goes unarticulated in a world which reveres beauty and slimness, which cloaks hypocrisy in an attitude of liberal acceptance and benevolence while secretly snickering at those it purports to support. The same ‘Feministing’ site which had a round table discussion with Guardian editors, just about the same time that The Guardian ditched me from CiF because Beth Ditto threatened to quit her column if I ever wrote for them again, printed this article about me.

The message that (…) Fowler (has) been complicit in sending (…) is neither groundbreaking nor feminist. ‘This is all we’re good for’ - that’s the only subtext, every time a well-heeled young woman decides to rent her ‘pert little academic arse at a hundred for hire. Johns everywhere must be rubbing their hands with glee: even the clever ones, the posh bitches who think they’re better than you, will turn into the willing nymphettes of your stickiest wet dreams at the flash of a fiver, is the implication. We’ll let them into our elite universities, but under their scholar’s gowns they’ll always be slappers.

Did this offend me? Not really. You do a job that comes with a certain amount of baggage, an obvious stereotype, and obviously you’re going to inherit that baggage. You have to be calm about the insults and assumptions and accept them, say your piece and sit back with a certain level of detachment, because in the end it doesn’t really matter what some priggish self-proclaimed 'feminist' pain-in-the-ass concocts about your “university education, support network, self-possession and financial safety net,”. A "university education" that the government and scholarships paid for as my parents retired early from health problems, a “support network” of, precisely, ME, the "self possession" that, what, they give out free from Oxbridge if you're white and have a double-barrelled name? My "financial safety net"?! Of what? The vast riches my family of seven acquired while Dad was working as a GP on shit wages back in the 80's and mid-90's before retiring from health problems just as my sister and I hit university? My imaginary trust fund? The million pounds bequeathed to me by Penguin for my first book?!

Here’s what the author of that piece says in defense of her language and tone:

“The use of visceral and graphic language was a deliberate ploy to emphasise what I feel is a persistent misogyny in media culture over the notion of 'high-class' sex work. It was designed to apall, because I reckon that media glee over Oxbridge-educated sex workers is utterly apalling. The tone is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, a dig at the hatred of women's sexuality in mass media culture and not a vindication of that hatred. Having been a stripper myself (as I mention in the article) such a point would have been massively hypocritical - but maybe that irony didn't come across well enough, and for that I apologise. Nevertheless, I used heated terminology when I'm angry, and I'm angry about this - not with female sex-workers themselves, never that, but with the demeaning way in which they are treated in the British press.”

And here’s what one of her commentators has said in response:

“feminist writing should be uncomfortable because we're supposed to be not shying away from uncomfortable issues. Occasionally I've felt you've been a little gratuitously provocative in your use of language - well, I know it can be hard to resist sometimes - but very rarely, and in this case not at all. Also, while it's important to listen, trust me, don't go down the slippery slope of censoring yourself!”

“I found the tone of the article entirely appropriate and I don't think the author should censor herself.”

I find myself resigned to the hypocritical comedy of the situation: a feminist website rabbiting on about how women are disempowered and prejudiced against, how women are rewritten in patriarchal narratives.... a feminist website rewriting me and my life and my opinions, and eventually, getting me deleted from the entire narrative by kicking up enough fuss that I get kicked off Comment is Free!

My controversial fat article came out in April, but it wasn't until June 10th that it was brought up in the round table discussion on ‘Journalism and Women’. The discussion featured the editor of Feministing, and three Guardian editors. I wrote my last piece for The Guardian on June 12th, and despite offering to rewrite the original Fat piece minus the Sarah Silverman language several times, and with an explanation of my intent and the basis for my views, this was declined.

In conclusion, the fat article was a bitch of an article, it was mean and it was offensive, but it certainly made a point, and that was my intent, and like the femmies keep telling us, "feminist writing should be uncomfortable because we're supposed to be not shying away from uncomfortable issues".

But perhaps 'happy hookers' are exempt from being women or feminists.

GET OUT THAT VOTE!

2008-11-03T17:34:00.002-05:00

Go vote for Obama tomorrow!

Look up polling stations here.

I can't believe this day is nearly here after six weeks in Colorado, but having just heard the sad news about Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, my heart goes out to him and his family. As one sweet old guy just said, "Let's hope her spirit moves the campaign". Condolences and love and good wishes to them.

Sad day, hopeful day. What a strange mix.

oh SHIT!!!

2008-10-31T19:53:00.003-04:00

No I didn't write that wiki page and yes it was a joke.

So I'm usually pretty good with money, but in the last 8 weeks I've had:

A 1600 dollar bill to rewire my apartment in England after it nearly killed my renters.

A 2335 dollar bill from ER because I caught CA-MRSA

A 500 dollar copay for shop repairs on my car insurance while the insurance company claims it off the other guy who drove into me.

All this after I'd just laid down 3 months worth of car insurance, a deposit to my landlord / roommate in LA, a deposit on my health insurance and a deposit on my car - about another 3 grand.

And then to top it off, my interest-free overdraft on my student account finally expired and they forgot to tell me and hit me with a 600 dollar bill in fees, and a check for 1800 bucks I was expecting hasn't turned up.

Safe to say I'm pretty broke, scared and depressed right now. I've never had such a run of bad luck in my entire life! I feel like I did when I first moved back to NYC, except more frightened.

And the reason I'm working for free on the Obama campaign when none of my cards work and I'm absolutely fucking terrified I might have to declare bankruptcy? The number of good, hard working people I've met in this town who had to foreclose on their mortgage or struggle to make the health insurance every week and fight with companies to get them to pay hospital bills.

I know that makes me dumb in many ways, but sometimes when you spend every goddamn minute worrying about you and your bank account you have to stop and look at the bigger picture. Financially this last 8 weeks has brought me to the brink, but what can I do?

Weep and then phonebank voters. We spent all day shunting water around Colorado in preparation for Get-Out-The-Vote. This experience is amazing.

And after Obama gets elected, well, then I need to earn some fucking money. Anyone got a job for me?!!

Try and read the last para of my wiki page....!!

2008-10-31T13:35:00.001-04:00

Ruth is currently involved in various evangelical campaigns in Colorado advocating for pro-life causes. Focus on the Family lists her as one of the top 25 crusaders for life in the U.S. today, crediting with saving the life of over 4300 fetuses. Ruth is currently working on an autobiography which recounts her conversion from a left-wing, Marxist atheist into a born-again Christian. She recently took a vow of celibacy.

18th October 2008

2008-10-31T10:30:00.000-04:00

Ruth wrote: (to my Regional Field Organizer)

Graham, I might have to shoot Bob if he doesn't shut up. Is that OK?

Graham wrote:

Hahahaha, go for it.

Converted Republicans are like Evangelicals. They have been born again. They are still shaking and traumatized from birth, but even weakened and vulnerable, they have seen the light! Obama is our Savior! The rest of us must bow down in gratitude, weep and Spread His Word.

Converted Republicans are more important than the rest of us as they have been saved In This Lifetime, and therefore It Is A Miracle. Converted Republicans never shut the fuck up.

Working with Converted Republicans is very trying.

David used to be a Republican. David did three tours of Iraq. Now David likes to talk loudly about 'those Arab bastards' in Palestine, how he agrees with Amendment 48, the attempt to define a person as an embryo at the moment of fertilization, and how his family has given loads of money to the IRA and hate the Brits, except me, as I appeased him by saying once, when drunk, we should just give Northern Ireland back to the Irish. David has a rotten, rotten bowel problem, and when not proselytizing about Israel or Ireland, David is farting. Foul, obnoxious stenches that crawl into your lungs and destroy the bronchioles with ruthless efficiency.

There are many more. It is a constant source of amazement to me that the office runs as smoothly as it does considering we have all these patently insane characters residing in it inflicted with verbal diarrhea, but it does. We had a guy walk in the office this week, stand by the desk and yell loudly:

"Listen up people.I'm gonna get on my soapbox for a second, and I want y'all to listen and understand exactly what you're doing."

We all looked at each other. I really thought the dude was a crazy Palin supporter and was going to shoot us all, but then he started talking, telling us how he'd lost his job at Enron, he couldn't get another, he got hit with crazy medical bills for his mentally disabled son, he lost his home.... by the end of it we were all weeping, until the dude left, and David snorted derisively. "Fuckin' nutjob.". David farted as if to punctuate the point, and we all trundled outside to wait for the smell to pass, and the moment had gone.

The days are getting longer, we're all getting tireder. How can you get complacent after New Hampshire? We were told to make sure we weren't late to the office today, and at 9am we had our usual conference call with the other field organizers in the Denver area, when a familiar voice chimed in - it was Senator Obama. The entire office just froze, and he talked to us for about 20 minutes, thanking us for our work, and saying that this was the best-organized campaign in American political history, but we couldn't get complacent.... It was pretty awesome, very emotional. That would be my key word for this campaign: emotional. Listening to people's stories all day is heartbreaking. I went to a debate party to recruit volunteers and voters the other day, organized by the local Dems and this large lady called Rose stood up and told us how she used to be the lawyer for that girl in Abu Ghraib, and she supported Obama because she was so disillusioned with civil liberties in the US. I think she's probably one of the only people in the US who actually read the entire Patriot Act.

We're all tired and broken and exhausted. Not winning is not an option, but we keep needing to dredge the very last vestiges of energy to keep going until midnight every night, especially when we're all wallowing in snot and flu. I've started finding new projects to keep my energy up - like organizing a women's night to educate women about issues on the ballot this year that will affect them and Obama's policies towards women. I've been working with NARAL on this loosely - campaign rules mean we can't be seen to condemn or endorse a ballot initiative so our conversations have to be these weird coded things - but they've been pretty awesome. Colorado is a crazy state, make no mistake. Focus on the Family is only a half hour away from here in CO Springs.....

Back to phone-banking

Campaign For Change Office

2008-10-30T00:00:00.001-04:00

14th October 2008

2008-10-29T12:26:00.001-04:00

One of our eighty-something ladies comes in this morning, leans on the table confidentially clutching her clipboard, and sighs contentedly. "Yer know, when you're my age, you start reading the o-bitch-you-ary every day to see if yer in it, and today I saw this ole gentleman I didn't know who died of an anuerism. Said he wanted all donations to go to the Obama campaign. Ain't that cute? If I end up there next week I'm gonna do the same."

Perrin wrinkles her nose and looks confused, and Texas Pat, a 30 year-old Vet who resembles Uncle Fester from The Addams Family, scoots up to my desk to ask if he can canvass with me later. He just wants a ride in the Merc, which has been decorated with 'British Americans for Obama' gear and some pimpin' new dents, courtesy of an annoying little Berkely grad who has joined the office.

"So that new Ivy League kid came canvassing with me last night," I tell Pat. "And he opened the door of the car right into a fucking wall. Then he got lost on one block for 45 minutes. And after all that he had the cheek to ask if he could borrow money from me for cigarettes. I'm not digging the Ivy Leaguers."

Pat laughs. "I reckon he has a complex 'cause he's kinda short, and let's face it, he ain't good lookin'. Like John McCain. He gotta short man complex too. Weird though, I mean, Obama's 6' 2" and you never really see him towerin' over McCain on TV."

"I'm worried about Obama. I think he needs more carbs. He's a little skinny."

"Yeah, well. He looks after hisself. Can't believe he's 47, he don't look it. Oh well, you know what they say. Black don't crack."

Texas Pat waddles away to pester someone else, and more of our elderly volunteers enter the office and ply us with cookies and coffee and donuts.

We had Get Out The Vote training at the weekend, and dissension hit the ranks. Rachael wanted to be a Staging Location Director, but had been assigned as a Polling Lead instead. She held a mutinous meeting with me and Nik, the Management Consultant from SF, at Chipotle one lunchtime. We used the lack of proximity to the office as an excuse to down as much beer as possible before. We don't get out much, us volunteers.

"I can't take these people anymore! They're from out of town and they come in like they own the place and I should be in charge on election day, not them. It's my community and they have no personality. Excluding you two."

Rachael pouted and glared at us. I buried my face in my beer and let Nik, Person Manager Extraordinaire, handle her.

"I get you Rachael, I do. When I arrived here from San Francisco I was like 'what the fuck am I doing here?'. I thought I'd be in charge of something as I'm used to heading teams of 20 -50 people, and I'm having to take orders from two twenty-somethings who are trying to do the best job they can, but lack charisma. But you have to realize, as chaotic as this campaign is, it's organized chaos. The mess works brilliantly. And you are an integral part of it, and if you took on a leadership role we'd lose you as one of our best recruiters."

Rachael was eventually placated when we devised some fictional GOTV role for her that hinted at responsibility and leadership, and calm returned to the office.

Our volunteer base is growing every day. More and more people just rock up from blue states, check into a motel and introduce themselves at 9am ready to work 16 hour days. Ten days ago there were six of us working full time in the office (full time means 9am until midnight), plus our hundreds of part-time volunteers. Now there are 12. Like Nick said, it's amazingly, fantastically, bizarrely, magically organized chaos. It works for some odd reason. No one's turned away from volunteering. Even crazy Barbie, the fifty-eight year old who refuses to talk to any women aside from Rachael, and frequently disappears for 45 minutes at a time, only to be found staring fixedly into the sky, or wandering around in circles in the parking lot, is made to feel important, made to feel that she can make a difference. She makes a damn good document shredder at least!

Colorado is one of the three states this year which have, yet again, tabled amendments which could have profound impact on a woman's right to an abortion - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/opinion/13mon1.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin. Amendment 48 was proposed by a pretty terrifying group who go by the misleading title of 'Colorado for Equal Rights' - 'http://www.coloradoforequalrights.com/'.

The proposed amendment, no. 48, states the following:

"Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution defining the term "person" to include any human being from the moment of fertilization as "person" is used in those provisions of the Colorado constitution relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of law?"

This, obviously, makes abortion an impossibility in the state of Colorado - it will be redefined as murder. There is no provision in this amendment for rape, incest, ectopic pregnancies, or necessary abortion when pregnancy can pose a threat to the mother's life, and under this law even miscarriage could result in a murder inquiry. Not to mention the many women who have searched deep in their souls and made the horrific decision to have an abortion - in the current economic climate, people can barely support themselves. It's no wonder the abortion rate is rising. One of the jobs I've taken on in the office is to make sure people are aware of the impact of this amendment, so I've been liaising with NARAL - http://www.prochoicecolorado.org/ballotwatch.shtml. So many people don't read the ballot when they vote that there's a possibility, even though 60% of Americans are pro-choice, that this could pass. From the amount of people I've canvassed or spoken to on the phone, predominantly Catholics and Christians, abortion issues are a deciding factor for a small percentage of voters.

Health care is one of the biggest hopes for this election. Americans want free health care, a National Health Service of some description. Rachael and I walked into a store last night and she bumped into a guy she'd gone to elementary school with. They chit-chatted for a few minutes, and Rachael asked him who he was going to vote for.

"Obama all the way dude! I'm in it for the free health care. I got diagnosed with diabetes this month. It's killing me."

He shrugs sadly, a 25 year old kid already broken by medical bills.

"Hey, I work at Dino's. You send the volunteers round Friday, I'll hook you up with some pizzas for the campaign, ok?"

I was in ER abut five weeks back for a vicious staph infection. At the time I didn't have insurance - mainly because I'm really broke and I figured if I got really sick I'd just go home to the UK - after all, I've paid enough national insurance in my life. Of course life doesn't work like that and I ended up in Good Samaritan with a fever of 103 and a huge, revolting abscess on my knee. I spoke to the doctors and told them my predicament, and they agreed to lower the bill for me. It should be 500 bucks, they told me. But I could pay 300.

I was relieved at this and left ER and immediately got some health insurance which has managed to rape my remaining bank account quite considerably. I pay 110 dollars a month with a 500 dollar co-pay, which means even when I pick up prescriptions the amount I save, until I've spent 500 bucks, is minimal. Birth control which costs me 70 bucks a month still costs me 60 - I mean, what's the fucking point of a prescription plan?! I called up Blue Shield and told the bastards I was selling my kidneys so I could afford birth control. They didn't find this amusing and asked if it was a pre-existing condition.

After all these shenannigans, I was unprepared for the $2,235.81 bill which subsequently arrived from the hospital last week - $1500 of this for 'ER general', 50 bucks for a Vicodin, and 500 bucks for a swab and lab analysis! This country Fucks. You. Over. I cannot believe McCain's ridiculous plan to tax health insurance and give that bollox tax credit to people for health insurance. Medicine is not a business, health is not something that can be placed on the free market. It's ridiculous, but you all know this already. So go vote blue!

So GOTV nears.... I've been assigned to be a Poll Lead, which means I have a team of poll watchers under me inside the poll who have to report who has voted back outside to me. I then send this back to my Staging Location Director, who passes it up the line back to Chicago. I'm also responsible for recruiting volunteers to phone and canvass on election day, and making sure that the polls aren't interfered with, they open on time, that no one is turned away and disenfranchised for the wrong reason. We have 20,000 lawyers volunteering in Colorado alone who are on a hotline for election day to ensure that everyone who can vote does so without intimidation at the ballot - a very real possibility considering the Republican's attempts to claim voter fraud because of ACORN's success at registering under-privileged groups. In the Nevada area ACORN have registered over 100,000 new voters this year, and with their alignment with the Democratic party the Republicans are understadably freaking out and bleating voter fraud as their last resort. It doesn't help that some of ACORN's employees were convicted of voter fraud a few years back as the organization introduced a retarded policy of payment per doors knocked and voters registered (read this excellent article for more info - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-atlas/acorn-under-the-microscop_b_112503.html).... but this according to King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg, the misconduct was done "as an easy way to get paid [by ACORN], not as an attempt to influence the outcome of elections." This does little to deter the Republicans though.

Well, life trundles on here. The atmosphere is really positive, although thankfully the new influx of people has eased the burden on the rest of us so we often get six hours sleep a night now, and when the offices close to the public at 9pm we all get to enjoy a sneaky beer, which - c'mon - is important for team building. I love my fellow volunteers, they're awesome people, ot least because they're such a mismatched bunch - two former Republican Vets, a couple of Ivy League kids, a bunch of steely grandmothers, lawyers, financial consultants, college grads, the unemployed and uneducated alongside what is considered America's brightest and best - and everyone's equally as valued to the campaign.

2008-10-28T17:24:00.001-04:00

Dear Ruth,

We now have one week left until Election Day. I can't express how grateful I am for the time, effort, and talent you've put into Amendment 48. I know you've done it for the glory of God and for the lives of all these babies.

And I can tell you that I know babies have already been saved. I heard one story just last Friday about a girl who decided not to have an abortion after hearing information about Amendment 48 and a prayer from someone at her church.

She even drove to the abortion facility, but God brought back the prayer to her mind and she chose not to go through with it.

Praise God...this is what we work for! Even one life is worth everything that's gone into Amendment 48.

When we tell the truth we win!!

And we have already drenched the State of Colorado in Truth!!!

But, we can't quit now! I believe we will win this thing. Because the battle is the Lord's and He is the One Who fights for us, the victory is already won. Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world.

We've put together a list of the projects we still need to complete before and on Election Day. Please choose what you are able to do, so together, we can finish with a huge push!

* Walk your neighborhood with 48 literature. Or, call Cal Zastrow at 720-404-4042 and join a group that's walking together.
* Join our phone bank by registering at: http://coloradoforequalrights. com/user/register. Help us turn out as many pro-48 voters as possible! Whoever turns their base out wins.
* Make sure every member of your church knows about 48 and is planning to vote for it. Call through your church directory, or send an email out to all your fellow church members. Include your Colorado friends, neighbors, and Christmas list while you're at it. That personal touch makes all the difference in the world!
* Sign up to hand out literature at your polling place (or one nearby) on Election Day. Pray, while you're at it, that God would touch the heart of every voter with the truth that will set them free. (Please let us know if you want to do this, so we can keep a list of the polling places being covered.)
* Join our 3 Day Prayer Team. We're asking people to commit to prayer and fasting (if they are able) for 3 days, just like Queen Esther and her people did. So this means Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday (Election Day). Prayer and fasting do change things! Ask everyone you know to keep praying for Amendment 48 to pass and for lives to be saved, both physically and spiritually.

Everything you've done and continue to do makes a difference! Thank you for standing with us in this final hour. I am proud to call each of you my friends. May God continue to bless you and yours abundantly.

I hope you will also join us at our Victory Party on Election Night at 7:00pm. It will be held at the South Metro Denver REALTOR® Association 7899 South Lincoln Court Littleton, Colorado 80122

Denver Rally

2008-10-27T15:29:00.006-04:00

An awesome, awesome day. Volunteers got VIP tickets so we were superclose, at one point about a meter away from Senator Obama - unfortunately my camera ran out of juice and had to rely on a phone for pics!

Is Kristi Burton the young Sarah Palin?

2008-10-24T23:26:00.003-04:00

It’s hard to figure out what lies beneath Kristi Burton’s perfectly controlled exterior. She parrots the same phrases over and over in answer to every question regarding her impressive achievement of sponsoring the controversial Amendment 48. Amendment 48, a radical pro-life initiative on this year’s Colorado State ballot, states simply:

Shall there be an amendment to the Colorado constitution defining the term "person" to include any human being from the moment of fertilization as "person" is used in those provisions of the Colorado constitution relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice, and due process of law?

“I want to give a voice to the voiceless”, she snaps confidently, “and give the right of protection for every human being”. Amendment 48, she claims, “lays a common sense foundation upon which to establish a concrete definition of ‘personhood’ as supported by modern medical science”. And for the next 45 minutes, regardless of the questions, I’m treated to similar answers. Reading other interviews with her I recognize the exact same phrases, the same conclusions drawn by other journalists: that Kristi is a girl who has mastered the art of eradicating discussion with breathtaking efficiency. Is this evidence of a great future in politics, or a thorough training which borders on, dare I say it, brainwashing? After a repetitive interview in which I learn little about her personally other than that she thinks redefining the definition of ‘person’ to include an egg at the moment of fertilization is a great idea, I can’t help but nurture the sneaking suspicion that Kristi is a girl who has been exceptionally well-schooled in articulating a narrow view and doesn’t actually, herself, realize the vast implications of the initiative that she has so effectively spearheaded for the last year.

Kristi is an ideal figurehead for the pro-life movement. Pretty, blonde, intelligent, devoid of scandal, Kristi still lives at home with her parents in Colorado Springs and attends church regularly. She claims the idea of protecting the unborn came to her when sick in bed at aged 13. She felt, she said, it was the calling of her life to “give voice to the unborn child who doesn’t have a voice”. When I ask her why particularly the unborn child, when the already born are having a hard enough time of it - Colorado has one of the worst education records and womens' health initiatives in the United States - Kristi sounds defensive. “Well, I’m only 21,” she says, bristling. “I haven’t had the years it will take to help everyone else in the world, and right now I’m concentrating on giving a voice to the unborn. Hopefully I’ll move on in the future.”

Kristi claims the idea for the initiative came entirely from herself without any outside influence, although reluctantly admits to support from her family. She fails to mention Keith Mason - an older Right Wing Pro-Lifer who is the Director and Grassroots organizer for her group, Colorado for Equal Rights. Together Mason and his wife, Jennifer, both originally from Wichita, Kansas - what they term 'the abortion capital' of the US - founded a pro-life group entitled ‘Missionaries to America’ which references Colorado for Equal Rights on its website. Back in Kansas, Keith and Jennifer led the fight against ‘Tiller the Killer’, a doctor who ran an abortion clinic in Wichita. According to the American Missionaries website, Keith was personally responsible for increasing their ‘truth truck’ fleet from 4 to 9. A truth truck is a vehicle that carries photographs of ‘victims’ of abortion and, apparently according to the Operation Rescue website, photographs of Holocaust victims from World War II. Keith currently spreads the word of God and the Pro-Life messages to schools across the country, while a pregnant Jennifer stays at home to look after their two young daughters. He claims that he heard Kristi on the radio one day, and instantly offered his support for the campaign.

Many opponents, such as the snide political website ‘Wonkette’, have suggested Mason is primarily responsible for the idea of Amendment 48, but Kristi remains obstinate that the impetus for the idea came from her 13 year old self. Among other groups supporting Amendment 48 are Human Life International, a group that exists “to fight the evils of abortion, contraception, sex education and family breakdown”, The American Life League and dozens of others. If this makes Kristi merely a puppet, she is a puppet who is confident, precocious and unafraid, although unwavering from her claim that Amendment 48 is merely her chance to “give a voice to the voiceless”. It’s not the group’s intention, she says, to do anything more than define personhood - and overturn Roe Vs. Wade.

It is exceptionally easy for a state citizen to get an amendment onto the ballot in Colorado, unlike in Oregon or Montana, which all tried and failed to sponsor pro-life initiatives for the 2008 ballot. All Kristi needed was, in this case, 76,048 signatures – one reason, Emilie Ailts of NARAL suggests, that Colorado was targeted by the pro-life movement. Kristi and her group, the inappropriately named Colorado for Equal Rights, managed to get 131, 000 signatures for the ballot from various religious groups, predominantly Catholic, according to Keith Mason. The passage of 48, the “Personhood Initiative” was not entirely easy as pro-choice movements such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL challenged the decision in the Colorado Supreme Courts on the grounds that the amendment’s language was misleading. The courts found 7 - 0 in favor of Kristi and her group, and Amendment 48 made its controversial way onto Colorado’s ballot this year.

Despite Mason and Burton’s suggestions to the contrary, Amendment 48 has not received universal support in the right-to-life community, and has split many prominent pro-life groups. The Colorado Catholic conference, for example, does not endorse it despite Mason’s repeated claims that they do, and notably absent from their supporters are the National Right to Life, and the Republican Candidate for Senate, Bob Schaffer.

For all her confidence and stridentness, Kristi Burton is a young 21 – someone who evades answering whether she owns a passport, or has traveled more extensively than her recent national tour on the Republican and pro-life circuit. On her website one can find a video clip of an earnest, breathless and slightly patronizing Kristi recounting a case where an eight and a half month pregnant woman was killed in a car accident, and yet the child’s death was not taken into consideration when sentencing the man responsible. Under amendment 48, justice could be gained for the death of this unborn child, not just the mother, Kristi proclaims. The video ends with a somewhat inappropriately triumphant Kristi, beaming into the camera at the simplicity of her proposed amendment – one that will purportedly gain justice for the unborn victims of modern society.

Kristi was home-schooled, and even now lives with her parents as she completes a degree at an online school, Oak Brook College of Law and Government whose mission is “to build and establish the Biblical foundations of truth, righteousness, justice, mercy, equity, integrity, and the fear of God in legal education and in the professional arenas of law and government policy.”

Kristi doesn’t think that her youth and lack of exposure to the ‘outside’ world makes her views any less valid. She lives in the right-wing evangelical hotbed of Colorado Springs but is not, she makes pains to assert, associated with any of the radical right-wing groups in that area, such as Focus on the Family. What I find most uncomfortable about this articulate and pleasant young girl is simply her stubborn refusal to acknowledge that Amendment 48 will have radical implications not only for women’s rights, but for any Colorado state law that contains the word ‘person’, resulting in a bureaucratic mess of nightmare proportions as each existing law will have to be re-examined.

In contrast to earlier articles where Ms. Burton refuses to acknowledge that the intent of the initiative is to prevent access to abortion, Kristi openly talks to me about the impact Amendment 48 will have in overturning Roe Vs. Wade. Roe Vs. Wade recognized that laws banning abortion undermined a woman’s right to privacy under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment. In Roe Vs. Wade the Court's determination of whether a fetus can enjoy constitutional protection was separate from the notion of when life begins: "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer." The Court only believed itself positioned to resolve the question of fetal viability. In 1973 fetal viability was determined at what point the fetus could live outside the womb, around 21 weeks. The mother could abort for any reason, up to this point of fetal viability.

Kristi’s claim is that the judges in Roe Vs. Wade would have welcomed the ‘modern medical science,’ that, she says, proves “without a doubt that life starts at the moment of conception”, and therefore, by extension, that a fertilized egg “is a person without a voice.”

Amendment 48 would undoubtedly provide grounds for denying women access to contraceptives and IVF. The morning after pill, the pill, the IUD and nuvaring all make the womb an inhospitable environment for an already fertilized egg. Thus, they may be declared unconstitutional – not on the grounds that they do not allow an egg to implant, an egg that still needs a uterus to gestate - but they effectively ‘kill’ a ‘person’.

“The impact of this initiative will extend far beyond the legality of abortion. If fertilized eggs have the legal right to access Colorado’s courts – which is one of the rights that would be granted by this initiative – what does this really mean for Coloradans?” Kathryn Wittneben, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado asks. “Does this mean fertilized eggs can petition the courts to make it illegal to use the most effective forms of birth control if those contraceptive methods create an inhospitable uterine environment for fertilized eggs? Does this mean that a fertilized egg can sue a pregnant woman if she miscarries? If we’re talking about granting rights to fertilized eggs, all of these questions about possible negative impacts and legal consequences have to be raised.”

Kristi dismisses these claims as “Scare tactics - hypothetical situations and myths perpetuated by our opponents” and “having no basis in reality”. When I say that redefining a person affects all state laws that contain the word person, Kristi is obstinate. “This amendment could not do that.” Kristi is at pains to assure me that there are no laws banning abortion in Colorado. “You can have an abortion up to nine months,” she says earnestly, conveniently forgetting that Federal law supersedes State law, and that Federal law puts a cap on abortions after 21 weeks in the United States. When I ask if Kristi would like the US to be placed in the same league as Malta, Ireland, Nicaragua and El Salvador, all countries in which abortion is a serious felony, and all countries which have questionable human rights records for women Kristi refuses to answer the question and returns to her favorite phrase. “Those countries are all Catholic. Our separation of church and state would not allow that situation to develop. All I want to do is give a voice to the voiceless.” The fact is, the pro-life movement chose a perfect figurehead in Little Miss Perfect Kristi Burton.

Kristi’s new favorite phrase in the run-up to the election seems to be ‘modern medical science’ and she deliberately avoids religious terminology in her conversations with me. In a press release from Keith Mason decrying the recent news that amendment 48 faces opposition from over 7,000 medical practitioners in Colorado, Mason includes quotes from practitioners who apparently support Amendment 48, including one Dr Sam Alexander, who states "At the time of fertilization, a single-cell embryo (zygote) contains all of the genetic information and biologic capacity to proceed through sequential developmental stages to a fetus, newborn, adolescent, and adult human being... The fact that a zygote is a person may be an "inconvenient truth", but we can't establish truths based upon what consequences we desire. We must establish truth first, then establish policies based upon that truth.”

Modern medical science, Kristi repeats constantly, is behind her belief that a fertilized egg at the moment of conception is a person. Modern medical science, according to Kristi, has advanced so much since 1973 that now one can define the moment life begins. It’s interesting, however, that Kristi doesn’t feel that this very same modern medical science can answer every question on how and when life came into being. She refuses to answer my query on whether she believes in Evolution and Darwinism, but in a previous interview with the Denver Westworld News in September she admitted, “I don’t feel like there is enough scientific evidence to prove evolution, and I think there is a lot of science on the other end that proves creationism.”

If only everything in life were so simple as Kristi Burton’s black-and-white ‘modern, medical’ world view. If amendment 48 passes, it may well be.

10th October 2008

2008-10-23T12:02:00.000-04:00

It is 8.30 am and the weather outside is frightful, but the Colorado Campaign for Change Lakewood office is, of course, delightful.

I'm in the office with Lisa, the office manager, a round, jolly grandmotherly woman, and bony, angular Midge, who is rather less grandmotherly although full of wrinkled and angular enthusiasm. Midge sports a pair of high-waisted stonewashed denim shorts, a button-up short-sleeved shirt, elbow-length blond hair, and a scrawny pair of liver-spotted knobbly legs encased in white knee length socks (pushed down). They discuss their respective children while the coffee brews and we enter voter data onto the computers. Lisa's grandkids are in school and doing well. Midge's 19 year-old adopted daughter just had her first baby and moved back home. Recently-divorced Midge changes the conversation to the topic of younger men. Women over sixty, she says, must never date men their age or older, because they will die before them, and that is inconvenient. One must always date younger men. "Take Rachael's Mom!" shrieks Midge in her western drawl. "Rachael's mom dated that older man, and what did he do? He died two months after the wedding! Always said she coulda done better, attractive woman that she was. We kinda had a falling out over that, sad, but that's life I guess! You should never go for an older man. It's all in the gut. It's the gut that kills 'em. Men get that big ole ugly gut and it kills 'em. Hey Ruth, I sold my car to pay off my eight-thousand dollar credit card bill, can ya gimme a ride home?"

I give Midge a ride home after her volunteer recruitment shift is over.

"Oh your car's so beautiful! I ain't never seen a car like this color before, such a beautiful blue! I do miss my car, but couldn't afford the repayments after I lost my job last year, so now I git the bus everywhich place."

I drop Midge off at Chipotle on Union so I can pick up the 15 free burritos Chipotle has donated to the campaign for the volunteers' dinner. She hovers around me, a tight smile on her pinched face.

"Take a burrito," I say. "We have loads. Take it home."

"Oh no, I kent! That's for you guys. I'll jes' buy myself something and then walk on up the hill home."

I wave goodbye as Midge waits forlornly for an enchilada, get in the car and drive back to the office, and it only really occurs to me halfway there that she wanted a ride up the hill and was too embarrassed to ask.

The volunteers at Colorado's Campaign for Change office frequently astound me. A 93 year-old Republican calls me to tell me he's voting Democrat for the first time in his life, is there anything he can do to help? An 83 year-old veteran informs me he can't leave his wife for too long as she's incapacitated after a stroke, no, he doesn't know how to use the internet, but if I drive voter information to him, he'll do phone-banking from his house. Laurie, a former RN who has severe epilepsy, comes in every day and says that her epilepsy had turned her into a prisoner, and the Obama campaign has given her a new lease of life – she hasn't had a grand mal for six months now. Kids and grandparents and Republicans and Catholics and Hispanics and immigrants who can't vote – the Democratic demographic is breathtaking in range and skin color and age. I have never before felt part of something so all-encompassing and growing every day.

The grassroots support this campaign has generated is absolutely unprecedented in America's political history, and to be part of that change, to watch Senator Obama's support dwindle as Palin came onboard, and then leap ahead as the Republicans make screw-up after screw-up and the rest of the country start to listen to his message, is astounding. This is not to say that Colorado, despite its ever-growing group of willing volunteers, is easy to work in as a Democratic campaigner. From calling and canvassing and talking to everyone and anyone, it's apparent that there exists a core section of society here who will never vote on anything other than moral issues – namely, abortion. I spoke to a thirty-something Iraq war vet who worked on the Kerry campaign yesterday, and he, amongst five others that day, cited abortion as the primary reason he would not vote for Obama.

"I saw this documentary, and they said that between 26 and 32 weeks they can't kill the baby in the womb so they pull it out and place it on a table and watch it die, and I'm a Catholic and that's jes' wrong."

I reply that abortion after 18 weeks is illegal in the US, and that Senator Obama is not pro-abortion, but pro-choice for women, making sex-education a priority within schools in order to prevent unwanted pregnancies and hence lower the abortion rate. I reference a book by Larry Bartels which points out that the economy has historically flourished under Democratic rule, and waned under Republican rule, and point out a widely known statistic which demonstrates the correlation between the economy and abortion numbers. The guy listens courteously and we have a half-hour discussion, while I frantically google answers to his questions, ending with a quotation I found from Senator Obama I think it's worth including here:

"I think that most Americans recognize that this is a profoundly difficult issue for the women and families who make these decisions. They don't make them casually. And I trust women to make these decisions in conjunction with their doctors and their families and their clergy. And I think that's where most Americans are. Now, when you describe a specific procedure that accounts for less than 1% of the abortions that take place, then naturally, people get concerned, and I think legitimately so. But the broader issue here is: Do women have the right to make these profoundly difficult decisions? And I trust them to do it. There is a broader issue: Can we move past some of the debates around which we disagree and can we start talking about the things we do agree on? Reducing teen pregnancy; making it less likely for women to find themselves in these circumstances."

I'm pretty sure I don't convince the guy to vote for Obama, but I make him think and question what he initially took as truth and spouted to me as reasons for voting for McCain ("Obama is a terrorist", "Obama won't take the pledge of allegiance", "Michelle Obama said that stupid comment about 'being proud to be American for the first time'", "Obama is pro-abortion"). That was something, at least. That was something.

Midweek Rachael and I are invited to a women's house party with Laura Tyson, one of Senator Obama's senior economic advisers. We turn up in a pretty affluent neighborhood after an afternoon of canvassing in a trailer park (not fun when you drive a Merc, believe me…. I felt like I was sending exactly the WRONG messages in that situation! Hlaf glad the driver's side was all caved in and scratched up...)

About fifteen women are there, and Laura Tyson graciously sits down with us over wine and cheese and gives a fascinating talk into the economic policies of Obama, and even commented on the recent British bailout. I'm loathe to suggest she advocates the British government's actions, but she's not exactly condemnatory either, which is interesting. After an hour, she leaves with her security to go to another meeting, and I'm left there with fifteen of my fellow women volunteers, again astounded at this campaign, amazed that someone who is part of Obama's inner circle took an hour to sit down to fifteen volunteers in Denver, patiently explain the economy and future policies, and then leave to do it again at someone else's house, someone else's community center, a school, a union HQ. This, to me, is unbelievable, and I can't ever imagine it happening in the UK without a bunch of photographers and press turning it into a staged photo opportunity.

This is why this campaign is so phenomenal – no one is 'too poor', 'too uneducated', the 'wrong' class, the 'wrong' color. Everyone deserves to be patiently sat down and listened to. This is what we, as volunteers, have to promote. When my Field Organizer walked into the office this morning and said a lady had called him in tears to thank him for sending her detailed information on a particular issue she was concerned with alongside a hand written note, and that consequently she'd decided to switch her vote from McCain to Obama, I knew why I was here. Even as a non-voter I feel like I'm part of a global movement for change, and being welcomed into the campaign without question despite my past, my nationality and my unwavering ability to unintentionally, and intentionally, insult with my bluntness, has started to soften my habitual misanthropy.

Well, it's 10.30pm here in Lakewood, and another night of voter-calling has just ended. We're getting more and more volunteers everyday, and a colleague of mine from San Francisco just got off the phone beaming after a lady thanked him for calling – she'd received five automated machine calls from the Republican party that week and was so relieved to speak to a real human person! It seems the Republicans have yet to tap into the grassroots arena that the Democrats are utilizing to the utmost success. Everyday brings better and better news for the campaign – not least the news that Obama will be in Denver on November 20th! Will I be there? You betcha! (wink). I'm dressing as Sarah Palin for halloween, fyi.

I'm beginning to realize that the reasons people cite for not voting for Senator Obama are predominantly racially based, or purportedly 'moral' and 'ethical' (abortion, 2nd amendment, blah blah). I've even heard, several times, a bleak and unpleasant response from voters that boils down to 'why should we vote for someone who's going to be killed within six months' which is absolutely despicable, coming as it does after the 'Kill him' comments at McCain's rally earlier in the week. Despite the fact the smears are easily refuted, these fears can't help but affect all of us who have been profoundly moved by Senator Obama and the possibility of change in a country that we love, that we have seen suffer because of bad government, and that we know has the potential to be great again. I can only hold onto the idea that people who choose to believe these things do so for deeply personal prejudices and ignorance.

Blog embargo lifted - October 3rd 2008

2008-10-22T12:21:00.001-04:00

"I ain't racist," says the man, standing in his doorway wearing a pair of too-small graying pants, his huge, white, hairy pregnant belly quivering indignantly like aspic. "I just ain't gonna vote for no nigger."

I guess the trials of getting here in one piece is a heavy indication that volunteering in Colorado isn't going to be as clap-happy as my training weekend at Camp Obama in Long Beach, CA.

For starters a kid in a beat-up Acura drives into the Merc twenty minutes into the journey while I'm gliding happily along the I15. 911 later, I continue the journey shaken and pissed. Just as I'd gotten over that with a sober night in a shitty motel in Utah and 600 miles of relatively drama-free driving, I suddenly realize the same white Cadillac has been following me for 30 minutes, ever since I'd left a tiny remote town called Elsinore. I'm on a 150 mile barren stretch of road which is devoid of turn-offs, gas stations or small towns, and there's no place to escape. So I speed up - and the white car does exactly the same. I try slowing down to 40 miles an hour, and it slows down too, and for nearly two hours on this windy, rocky barren stretch of road through bumfuck Utah I'm followed by the creepy white Cadillac with blacked out windows. Eventually we near Green River, and I call 911, pull into the nearest gas station, and a fat, pompous Sheriff stroking a Tazer jumps out of his patrol car and walks gleefully over to the white Cadillac which has, of course, followed me in. I never do find out what happens. The Sheriff just tells me to keep driving, and he'll keep them in custody for a couple hours to prevent them from following me.

I eventually arrive in Lakewood, Colorado on Friday evening at 9pm. I'm staying with a host family I've never met before in my life, and the way my luck is rolling I half-expect to turn up and find myself placed with a bunch of NRA supporting raccoon hunters who wanted to kidnap and torture Obama volunteers, but I'm met at the door by a sweet, gentle, elderly Jewish couple called Diana and Bill. Bill used to be a Republican, but not since Bush got sworn in. They usher me into the house, install me on a sofa and ply me with milk and cookies. Bill regards me with curiosity: I am a 'pink-dotter', apparently, by virtue of my book and its subject matter. "You know, I didn't wanna put anyone up, but Diana insisted. She really wanted to help out because her nieces are working in Florida and Ohio on the campaign."

"They're staying with strangers like you are," says Diana. "And I just hope they have people who will treat them like family. What can I get you from the store? We're going tomorrow so just make a list and we'll pick it up"

Diana and Bill's home is a Home - no other word for it. Warm and filled with books and toys from their grandchildren, fresh baked goodies and quilts and the smell of vanilla coffee. I got lucky I guess, and it's about time after the month I've had. Bill and Diana's daughter suffered a stroke shortly after the birth of her first child, and so Diana and Bill are helping to raise the kid, a tiny, skinny two year old with carroty red hair. Bill looks at his picture sadly and shakes his head. "Kid can't jump, the doctors say his mobility is at 7%, but kid's a genius." He smiles wryly and affectionately. "Guess I've gotta get used to having a grandchild who's a nerd."

In the morning I get my first view of Lakewood, a suburb of Denver, the Mile High City, fringed by snow-capped mountains, russet, brown, red and golden leaves, strip malls, and a lot of Republicans. I drive to the Lakewood Campaign for Change office and am put to work canvassing in the Hispanic outreach areas with a Spanish/Cuban/American girl called Ana who's just moved back to Colorado after three years in Pampillona. The area we are assigned to isn't the poorest in Lakewood, but it certainly isn't affluent, as the junk and the overgrown weeds, the broken windows and the decrepit cars testify.

The first door I knock at is opened by an enormous fat man wearing only his pants. "I'm votin' for McCain," he drones, and narrows his eyes at me. "Even though McCain is going to raise your taxes, tax any employee health benefits you receive and continue the same policies as Bush?". "No he ain't." "Yes he is." "No, he ain't." "He is, look here at this pamphlet." Pause, and then the real issue. "Well, that may be, but I ain't gonna vote for no nigger."

There are people who invite us in, give us Mountain Dew and tell us their stories, registered Republicans who don't even know why they vote Republican but their parents did, and their grandparents. An old man with eyes blurred by cataracts, flaky dead skin hanging off his hoary face and a stale, urine smell about him answers the door and starts crying because he isn't going to vote this year - he can't vote Republican the way the country is, but he can't vote for a black candidate either.

There are three days left until voter registration ends, and so we hand out forms and encourage people to do the mail-in ballot. Colorado is plagued this year with an even longer ballot than usual - various complicated amendments to the state constitution rendering the ballot form a complicated maze of epic and confusing proportions. People are making a conservative estimate that completion will take at least 20 minutes, meaning voting on November 4th would probably involve lengthy and protracted queues. The Democrats are also gearing up to combat voter intimidation - Republicans informing felons they are unable to vote (untrue: they can vote in CO as long as they're not on parole), weeding out voters wearing Obama buttons or t-shirts (no political paraphernalia can come within 100 feet of the polling station), taking control of polling stations in predominantly blue areas and failing to open them at designated times, preventing many people from casting their vote. I spent the afternoon working in the office and at least 3 valid registered voters came in to check that they actually could vote: they'd been told by a Republican campaigner, wrongly, that they couldn't.

That first day I feel wobbly and uncertain, alternately depressed and ecstatic by the people I encounter, and eventually it hits 9pm and the office starts to quieten down, until it's just me and the other long-term volunteers - Erin, a girl from Tennessee, Graham, a schoolteacher from Brooklyn, Perrin, a law student at Yale, Nick, a math teacher from Pennsylvania with an uncanny resemblance to Michael Cera, David, an Iraq war veteran - a gun-toting, redneck registered Republican who'd 'seen the light' (and couldn't believe he was "workin' fer free with a bunch of freakin' hippies") and Rachael, a political science major at the local university. We are all under 30, not native to Colorado, organizing and recruiting a group of local volunteers who are predominantly over sixty. We work all night entering data and chasing up issues, occasionally pausing to grab pizza and fries provided free by local restaurants, and then crawl home to bed at 1am, a layer of frost settling gently on the crisp, quiet night.

The next day I'm out in the field canvassing Hispanic areas again, and I return eight hours later to an office that goes suddenly quiet when I walk in. There is an awkward pause, broken only by Former-Republican David arguing with Perrin and Nick about the 2nd Amendment -

"Did you know that when Great Britain banned firearms after the Dunblane Massacre violent crimes increased by 450%? And that suicides with shotguns are counted amongst victims of gun crimes?"

Nick pauses, tries to swim, flails wildly, drowns.

"Er, well, I have this article you should read which says guns are bad."

David grabs the article and marches outside, the light from his cigarette throwing an eerie glow across his face, an intricate battleground of scars. "Nick, what the fuck kind of hippy crap is this? What the fuck is an AK-pistol? There's no such thing as a fuckin' AK pistol!"

"It's a pistol made from recycled hemp materials," I say, and David pauses momentarily, his eyes wide with disgust, before he realizes, too late, that I'm taking the piss.

Rachael and I make an executive decision to make a last gasp at registering more voters by going for a beer, so we drive down to The Baker Street pub and settle down next to a log fire with a couple of Coors Lites, and a mass of forms.

"So everyone googled you and found all these articles and pictures online," giggles Rachael. "It was really cool! And then David downloaded your pictures and put them on a slideshow on all the computers and all the old ladies volunteering started complaining about porn and there was some mild hysteria, but everyone thinks it's kind of cool and radical. David's such a pervert. Freaking Republican. I don't know what he was trying to do, but it kind of back-fired. I think Erin was a little freaked out, but they're impressed with the book and the fact you're here and you can't even vote."

"That's weird, I get on really well with David. He's nuts but I thought he was cool."

"He's very conservative still. I caught him perving chicks on that facebook group 'Hot Mommas for Obama' this morning."

"Hmm. It happens."

A drunk, skinny red-head comes over to argue with us because he's heard we work at the Obama office.

"Why you working for the nigger? Don't get me wrong, I ain't votin' for McCain, but why'd you wanna work for Obama? This country fuckin' sucks, we need a third party, the people's party, led by the fuckin' people, controlled by the people... like at the Rage Against the Machine concert when we marched! That was fuckin' awesome! And the cops knew they couldn't stop it as we'd kill them all! You believe that Obama bullshit? He's gonna be like every other fuckin' leader, a lyin', cheatin' asshole. We need to abo - abo - abolish the government. "

"But then we'd dissolve into total anarchy," says Rachael pragmatically,

"You shut up! There might be a bit of anarchy, but then it'd sort itself out, and the people would get heard, people like me... who no one listens to...."

He starts snorting and wiping his nose, and pulls out a hundred dollar bill from his wallet, throws it in the fire and giggles insanely as he watches it burn, a thin, vivid purple flame. He's too skinny and too pale, his pupils malevolent little pinpricks. It turns out he's the local drug dealer, and despite the fact he doesn't like black people, he says he will vote for Obama. Strike one for the Democrats.

Rachael and I hand out a few forms and get to bed at 3am. I get up at 7 to the sound of Ewan, the tiny grandchild of Bill and Diana, screeching excitedly about his new toy Ferrari outside my door. I sit down for coffee with Diana as Ewan gabbles away, a huge grin on his tiny, eager little face. "Are you getting enough sleep? They're working you so hard! Bill and I want to take you for dinner one evening. Can you get a night off?"

I shrug. I want to go for dinner with Bill and Diana too but there's a sadistic streak in Obama Campaign HQ's, and we seem to just work and work and work, and 'nights off', not to mention - god forbid! - days, are anathema to the truly dedicated Obama volunteer. I have never worked like this before. Ironically I discover a work ethic in a job which does not have payment and offers few rewards, if you discount the bonus of helping to elect a President that is neither retarded nor crooked and may actually sort out the economy, but I was thinking more of free t-shirts, perhaps a yard sign or two.
I bade goodbye to Diana and Bill who are doing 'Race for the Cure' today, and get to the office at 8.30 am. David and I spend the morning looking up 'Dachshunds for Obama' which is an interesting and informative site I recommend you all visit. David has three dachshunds, one of which is called Simon and is, according to David, misanthropic, with major trust issues. The rest of the day is spent with last minute voter registrations, and driving like a mad-woman in my broken Mercedes to the County Clerks office to deliver forms before the 5.30pm deadline.

So this is my life for the next 28 days - no sleep and anonymous hate phonecalls from Republicans ("Is this the Obama office? I was jes' in there an'.... an'.... I have never met... so many pseudo, yeah, pseudo intellectuals who look down on other people because you think you're all so special and clever voting for the nigger....", "Well, I have never met a person low enough to harass young women they don't know on the phone because of their political beliefs. Good day!" Ring ring. "An'... an' I wanted to say - you Democrats are gonna burn in HELL!" "Dude, get off the phone before I call the cops." Pause. He hangs up.)

Amendment 48

2008-10-14T16:19:00.001-04:00

Scary stuff.

Farewell My British Liberal Journalistic Career....

2008-10-12T21:05:00.006-04:00

A lot of people have been emailing me since May to ask why I don't write for The Guardian's Comment is Free page anymore. The truth is I really don't know why. I moved back home to America after a six month break in the UK, wrote a final piece for them, and then the site got redesigned and I was dropped from the contributors list, and have heard from various writer friends that my name is absolute mud amongst the editors there. My particular favorite story came from a writer friend of mine who was having lunch with a CiF editor. My friend mentioned my name in passing. The editor then pulled a face and said "Why are you friends with her,". Nice.

I've emailed them to ask why I went from contributing two pieces a week for three months to nothing, and heard back nada. Obviously this bothers me as I loved writing for Cif. However, when I was writing I was pretty limited to women and stripping, and was specifically told I couldn't write about politics as 'people would just ask what on earth do you know'. Interestingly, early on when writing for The Guardian I requested that they change my short bio / byline from 'Ruth Fowler used to be a stripper' which I found insulting (who on earth gets described by what they 'used' to do?!), to 'Ruth Fowler is a writer'. This request was ignored and unacknowledged, and my bio stays like this, to this day.

I pitched an article (one of many which was ignored) to Cif three weeks back on the unprecedented grassroots political organization this campaign has inspired, which was subsequently written up on the front page of the New York Times yesterday (not by me, sadly). I've noticed that The Guardian's US election campaign coverage is written almost exclusively by men.

The point is I feel frustrated with The Guardian. Certainly from a personal, egotistical point of view, from hurt feelings at being slighted, but also, objectively, because I delivered every time I did write for them, and I wrote humorously and well, but for some reason it was not enough. For some reason I can't identify, a reason that hasn't been explained to me despite repeated requests, I pissed off someone in that office so much so, that I seem to be indefinitely blacklisted. Perhaps because I'm pretty outspoken and while I'm steadfastly a liberal and a Democrat, I take issue with British liberal media's ridiculous political correctness and their accompanying hypocrisy.

While I myself remain staunchly Liberal and a Democrat (albeit one who, as yet, cannot vote) I have to say I'm utterly disillusioned with my experiences writing for a supposedly 'liberal' newspaper. After writing this I've probably burned my bridge (to nowhere) well and truly. Does this put me in a worse position than I was before, constantly pitching CiF editors fail to even acknowledge my emails, pitches or suggestions?

Probably not.

So, farewell to Cif. I'm not going to say I'd never write for them again as I'd obviously love to, but the reasons I don't write for them is a mystery that's out of my hands.

On a more cheery note - just done my GOTV training with 250 other volunteers, both full and part-time, in Golden, Colorado - looks like I'm a Poll Leader for November 4th, so will be working from 5am until midnight if so! OK, enough whining, back on the campaign trail.... and ..... COLORADO'S TURNED BLUE!!

Pre-1865 was 2008 at a Republican rally

2008-10-11T19:12:00.004-04:00

The Republicans are waaaaayyyy out of line on this.

I'm in agreement with civil rights campaigner John Lewis when he says that the Republican tactics are "sowing the seeds of hatred and division". McCain and Palin have created a monster, and while McCain seems to be blanching at the realisation as this video (partly) demonstrates (note he does NOT deny that Obama is "an arab" but merely blusters on his character), Palin is revelling in it.

From the Gawker article I referenced:

Sarah Palin addresses a different guy shouting "Terrorist!" with "Bless your heart" and remarks that her son is in Iraq protecting his right to say those things.

Sometimes, most times, I get the feeling this campaign is, when it comes to the core, as simple as good vs. bad.