Olympic gold medal winner Bruce Jenner, known more recently as the beleaguered stepfather to the Kardashian clan on the reality show, "Keeping up with the Kardashians", has begun the transition to become a woman, choosing "Caitlyn" as her female name.

News of the transition was, let's be honest, mind-boggling.  Some saw it as nothing more than a weird cry for attention.  Jenner was, after all, the odd man out on a reality show based almost solely on sheer vanity.  Female vanity.

I know almost nothing about Bruce Jenner's past history and I've never watched more than 10 minutes of the reality show, but if Jenner says she never felt comfortable as Bruce, I have no reason to doubt it.  It could be that, now, at age 65, the need to be the person she really is became all the more compelling.  As we age we look forward, not back.  We get it that time is running out.  If we're ever going to do the things we've always wanted to do, we should have started yesterday.

It takes guts to open up to the need for a gender change. It means a complete and total make-over, the likes of which most of us can't even imagine. Intensive psychological testing is required, often for years, before the last radical change--genital surgery--takes place. But the transition begins the moment the candidate accepts that their birth gender is not and never has been who they are.

Hormone therapy begins the transition and the results can be startling.  The voice changes, the body begins to transform, the mind gets comfortable with this new person.  But, because they live among other people, and because what's happening will require some explanation, it's the beginning--the coming out--that requires the most courage.  Not everyone will understand.  Some will laugh at such a thought.  Some will be sickened by the whole idea.  Knowing this, many of the mis-gendered will take the steps to change, anyway.  It's hard enough for folks who aren't famous, but, for someone like Jenner, the public transition requires skin as tough as hide.

Caitlyn Jenner is on the cover of this month's Vanity Fair.  Buzz Bissinger wrote the story.  Annie Leibovitz took the photos in a session kept secret until the photos were released just days ago. Jenner has breasts and a sculpted waist.  She has long hair and feminine cheek bones.  She looks like, and is, a beautiful woman.

So why am I troubled by the Vanity Fair feature?  Maybe because I had hoped for a piece that might have celebrated Jenner as a whole woman and not just a sex symbol.  I understand wanting to feel feminine and sexy--even or especially after having to hide that part of you for over six decades.  I'm not suggesting a modest cover-up until the world gets used to the idea.  The part of the world that isn't used to the idea will never get used to the idea.  But am I the only one who saw the cover and immediately thought "Ack! Kardashian"?

I read that Annie Leibovitz was in tears at the end of the photo session.  She wanted to get this most important unveiling right and in the end she felt she nailed it.  Leibovitz is a brilliant photographer and the photos are beautiful.  But there is still, for me, an uneasy feeling that unless Caitlyn moves in another direction her appearance will be all there is.  And it won't be enough.

I was in high school in 1952, when George Jorgensen went public with the news that he had undergone multiple sex-change surgeries in Denmark and was now a woman.  Her new name was Christine.  The New York Daily News cover story was headlined, "Ex-GI Becomes Blond Bombshell". The circus that followed was unrelenting, and the poor woman became the subject of ridicule and outright hatred far beyond what should happen to a person whose life had caused nary a single hurt to another living soul.

It dogged her for the rest of her life.  She wondered at one point if the doctors had made her a woman or a freak, and that line became the headline on a poster advertising the dreadful 1970 movie about her life.  She opted for glamour and was always photographed perfectly dressed, perfectly coiffed, perfectly made up.  Being a woman was her full time job.

But it turned out she was much more than that.  She was a pioneer in transgender awareness and acceptance.  There have always been gender identity issues, but Christine Jorgensen allowed every aspect of her transgenderization to go public, not for titillation but for science.  She wanted people to understand both the need and the process, and there is no doubt that her honest approach opened the doors and made it easier for others to follow.

I began working at the University of Michigan Hospital soon after they opened their first gender clinic in the mid-1970s.  We shared offices for a few months while ours were being renovated and there I met many of the men and women seeking to find their gender fit.  The doctors were heroic mavericks, constantly fighting against both personal and funding threats in order to establish that gender identity is not fixed in stone; that God and/or Mother Nature can get it wrong.  I never saw such longing, such determination, such bravery.

What Caitlyn Jenner needs to understand is that there is more to being a woman than the sum of her outward parts.  True womanhood isn't what is shown on a reality show featuring beautiful creatures obsessed with how they project themselves to a sector obsessed with outward beauty and not much else.

For all intents, and because she says so, Caitlyn Jenner is a woman, but what will she do now?  How will her womanhood manifest itself?  Who will she become now that she knows who she is? 

A reality show is already in the works.  On the trailer, Caitlyn says, "Isn't it great that maybe someday [I'll] be normal?  Just blend into society. . ."  A voice off camera:  "You are normal."  Caitlyn:  "Put it this way:  I'm the new normal."

It's all up to you, Caitlyn.  Now it's up to you.

(Cross-posted at The Broad Side.)

Monica Lewinsky is now 40 years old.  In the late 1990s, when she was barely into her twenties, she met  Bill Clinton, flirted a bit and caught his attention.  Before long she was having an affair with the President of the United States.  Heady stuff for a bedazzled young girl and of course she had to tell somebody.

As we all now know, she confided in her friend Linda Tripp.  Tripp, a Republican who hated Bill Clinton even before she knew about the affair, took Monica's story to Lucianne Goldberg, a literary agent specializing in conservative authors.  Goldberg had once tried to sell Tripp's book proposal on the differences between Bush 41's keeping dignity in the White House compared to Clinton's appalling misuse. It never went anywhere, but this time would be different.  This was big.

Goldberg encouraged Tripp to tape-record her phone conversations with Monica, and Linda apparently seeing nothing wrong with betraying a friend, went along willingly.  The man, after all, was an animal.

In a 2012 interview for the PBS American Experience production, "Clinton", Lucianne Goldberg recounted their roles in what was to become the most bizarre impeachment proceeding in the history of not just this, but possibly any country:

Producer: Did you have a sense. . .that this could be ruinous to his presidency?

Goldberg: Oh sure -- I knew it very likely would impeach him, and I was glad about that. That didn't bother me at all.

.....

Producer: Why were you interested in either [Michael] Isikoff or [Matt] Drudge having the story?

Goldberg: Well, in the first place I wanted Newsweek to have it. Because it was mainstream media and I wanted it. You know, I wanted the story to get out because I'm selling a book. You have to understand that. It was that as much as it was a political thing. It was nice that it was a political thing, because I didn't happen to agree with the Clinton administration. But I wasn't doing it for that reason. I was doing it because I was selling a book. I was representing a client.
......

Producer: But the hope was that by leaking a little of it or some of it to an Isikoff or a Drudge, it would generate interest for the buyer.

Goldberg: That was the whole idea. To get the story out, use that as a hook to get publishers interested, and sell a book. It was that simple.

Producer: But before this breaks, let's say, does Linda become preoccupied with the Monica relationship and what she's hearing? I can't imagine she wouldn't be. But, I mean, characterize how big a part of her life this became.

Goldberg: An enormous part of her life. But by the time Drudge broke the story, that was it. The taping stopped. I mean, the cat was out of the bag, Monica knew what Linda had been up to.

Producer: That part stops a lot of people cold. They're willing to understand why Linda might want to publicize this out of outrage, out of political motivation, whatever it is, but what it was going to do to Monica is where people begin to wonder. Did you think about that, did you talk about that with her?

Goldberg: Yeah, I don't think we thought it was going to be harmful, that harmful to Monica, really didn't. It made Monica a star, and if she had wanted to handle it differently if she had -- had she been a different kind of person -- I mean look at the girls that were being paid to sleep with Tiger Woods, they're going to have their own TV shows, and Monica could have been, you know, could have been just about anything she chose to be.

Producer: But it was at a minimum a betrayal of her confidence.

Goldberg: Yeah, sure.   

Linda Tripp then turned the tapes over to Ken Starr, the star prosecutor in the subsequent impeachment trial.  Feeling that the tapes were not enough, that they needed more evidence of lying and cover-ups, his bunch wired Tripp and had her meet several more times with Monica, feeding her leading questions in order to get her to put the last nails in Bill Clinton's coffin.

The intern had an affair and she told about it.  The president had an affair and he lied about it.  So far, nothing unusual in either of those responses.  Happens all the time with affairs.  They're never tidy.  But when you're the president and you have a vast Right Wing conspiracy already conspiring to take you down, the last thing you want to do is to provide them the ammunition.  Clinton the Unfathomable practically hand-delivered it.

So the president was impeached because he lied under oath about his affair.  He went on to serve out his term and would later become a revered senior statesman, building a new reputation as a person to go to for wise counsel and decisive action.

His wife, Hillary, humiliated beyond anything she deserved, went on to become a U.S. Senator and later, a formidable presidential candidate.  She may well be our next president.

Their daughter Chelsea, her own innocence shattered at such a young age, went on to college, built a satisfying career, married, and is about to become a mother.

No such good fortune for Monica.  She says in a blockbuster article in the latest Vanity Fair that, while she has had offers, they've all been based on her past notoriety.  Her goal was to work in the non-profit world but every interview told her they would be hiring her for her name and not her abilities.  Whether or not that was true, that was how she perceived it.

Photo credit:  Vanity Fair

She says she wants a private life.  She wants to work with groups helping people struggling with the effects of shame.  She is an expert on the subject and would be an asset to any like-minded group. I hope she can find her place there.

I have nothing but sympathy for Monica Lewinsky.  She was vulnerable and victimized by so many people, used and betrayed in ways so vicious it's a miracle she can still look back on it with anything resembling clarity.  She made bad mistakes but did nothing beyond being young and naively romantic to deserve what happened to her.

But why use a magazine like Vanity Fair to press her case?   Why do it this way?  Why now?

She has once again exposed herself to endless, ruthless analysis and cruel ridicule and everyone has to wonder why?  Who convinced her to open up Monicagate again?  The rumors are already flying; the pundits are already salivating, the haters are sharpening their talons.

She says in the article, "I am determined to have a different ending to my story. I’ve decided, finally, to stick my head above the parapet so that I can take back my narrative and give a purpose to my past. (What this will cost me, I will soon find out.)”

The ending of her story is whatever she makes it.  I only hope for her sake she gets it right this time.


(Cross-posted at dagblog and Alan Colmes' Liberaland. Featured on Crooks and Liars.)

Nearly every morning lately I wake up feeling as though my heart is ripping out of my chest.  My loves are still my loves, my health is okay, and it looks like there's a chance my measly but adequate bank account may outlive me, so for a while there the cause of these major palpitations was a bit of a mystery.

I'm slow sometimes, I admit, but I've had my suspicions.  Now it's official:  it's my country that is breaking my heart. My country has nearly lost her mind.  She falls for any smooth-talking con man who promises eternal prosperity but who's actually reveling in finding new ways to rob her blind.   For quite a few decades there, I thought she was big enough and bold enough, with a heart strong enough (and a memory long enough) to see past the big bucks and slick facades and recognize the same old deviltry that has plagued her so often before. But it's no use pretending. She has lost her sizzle and maybe even her will to live.  She's giving up.

 
What a blow to those of us who've been desperately trying to think of ways to stop this madness.  (And what madness to think we actually could.)  We've hammered, we've hollered, we've cajoled, we've used humor when nothing was funny.  We've marched, we've sung, we've preached, we've even tried voting.  Nothing has worked.

Now a number of sovereign states have moved in for the kill and it's likely they'll be the ones big enough to put the final nails in the coffin.  Even the states you would think should know better* have been seduced  into voting against their own best interests by the big money power-mongers.  One by one, they're giving control over to "small-government" campaigners who, once in office, are enjoying the hell out of yanking off the wool they've pulled over so many eyes.  (*Read my own besieged Michigan, expected to be the first of the 50 states to turn wholly and officially private.)

Much time and energy is spent citing articles and providing links to some brilliant arguments against what's been happening to our country. (Joseph Stiglitz has a chilling rundown of the takeover in the May Vanity Fair.) But frankly, words -- even brilliant words-- can't save an entire nation.  Words can anger us and encourage us and enlighten us, but being aware is a far cry from being in charge.  Ask any prisoner or slave.

Stiglitz writes in Vanity Fair:   "Alexis de Tocqueville once described what he saw as a chief part of the peculiar genius of American society—something he called “self-interest properly understood.” The last two words were the key. Everyone possesses self-interest in a narrow sense: I want what’s good for me right now! Self-interest “properly understood” is different. It means appreciating that paying attention to everyone else’s self-interest—in other words, the common welfare—is in fact a precondition for one’s own ultimate well-being. Tocqueville was not suggesting that there was anything noble or idealistic about this outlook—in fact, he was suggesting the opposite. It was a mark of American pragmatism. Those canny Americans understood a basic fact: looking out for the other guy isn’t just good for the soul—it’s good for business."

Even 180 years ago it was wishful thinking on de Tocqueville's part. We've always had the self-interest groups among us and they've rarely been in danger of properly understanding.  They've always dreamed of taking over and running things their way. They've always tried to pretend that the "Democracy" tag doesn't exist.  But we've always had clearer heads prevailing, knocking them sideways before their power and greed got completely out of hand.  Up until now.  Now it appears their ruthless tenacity has finally paid off. 

We know who they are.  They operate out in the open without fear of incarceration or retribution or even of losing the least little bit of their fortunes. They can't lose.  Their big money is safely kept far from these shores and there's nothing we can say or do that will hurt their feelings or make them think any less of themselves.  These are the people bent on forcing our country to her knees in order to line their own pockets and feel the power.  These are the people Jim Hightower describes in his must-read column:

Funded and orchestrated by such hard-core, anti-laborite billionaires like the Kochs, DeVoses, Bradleys, Scaifes, Coorses, and Waltons, the right wing has declared open season on public employees. But don't think that the assault by corporate extremists stops there. Using the GOP and the tea partiers as their political foot soldiers -- they intend to dismantle the public sphere, crush all unions, downsize the entire middle class, and banish egalitarianism as an American ideal. Ready or not, our nation has devolved into a new and nasty civil war, with moneyed elites now charging into legislatures and courts to separate their good fortunes from the working class and to establish themselves as a de facto plutocracy.

My country is breaking my heart.  What hurts the most is how easily she gave up.  I never thought I would see this once-proud nation lying in a rusted heap, bankrupt and riven and the laughingstock of the world.  I thought she was as much a fighter as the men and women who worked so long and so hard to keep her strong.  I never once thought she'd forget where she came from and let us down.
*
*