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Here’s Annette at her birthday party, which was last night. Forced to sit on the floor at her own party…. Well, actually, there were a lot of people sitting around on the floor.

This is the big “four-o” for Annette, and all she wanted (or so she says) was a great big birthday party. And it was a great party, too– lots of good friends, good talk, good food. Annette actually ended up making most of the food, which I guess kind of defeats the purpose of receiving a birthday party as a gift, but I helped. And I will keep cleaning up the mess after I post this message, too. Rachel brought an excellent cake– can’t say enough good things about that woman’s baking.

This isn’t all Annette is going to get for her birthday, though. Will and I have some small gifts up our collective sleaves, and I’m trying to convince Annette that she ought to give herself a new laptop computer as a combination 40th birthday/book contract/tax write-off celebration sort of deal. And I guess in a way, she already got a new TV (which we bought last week). Though I suppose that’s more a “gift” for Will and me, really….

It makes me think a bit about turning 40 myself, which is still a year and a half away. I’ll be getting ready for some sort of minor mid-life crisis by then, and I am considerably more greedy and materialistic than Annette, so I’ll probably want a new computer or a new car or a new car with a computer in it. At one point, I thought about getting my ear pierced when I turn 40, but I doubt I’ll do that. A pierced ear on a 40 year old man who is short and who has a big bulbous head isn’t a good look. Maybe I’ll get a tatoo though…

Okay, I’ve been reading a fair number of blogs lately (including my own), and I guess it occurs to me that some of this does sound a bit chicken little-like. Maybe we need to take a moment here to take stock and to calm down a bit.

Sure, I’m disturbed that people seemed to vote for Bush because a) they’re too stupid, b) they’re too afraid (despite the fact that they’re voting for the guy who made them afraid), c) they’re full of hate, and/or d) they felt like they were voting for God’s candidate. There are a couple of very good op/ed pieces in the NYT right now about all this.

Still, it isn’t as if this all happened over night, either. For one thing, most of the polls before the election gave the edge to Bush. So I guess I’m sort of surprised that I was surprised– maybe I was just in denial before.

For another, we were pretty much a right wing/red versus blue state nation on Monday, too. (Though, as I point out here, there are compelling reasons to think that we’re actually a purple nation). And really, that’s not too surprising given our origins. I mean, the Europeans who started coming here 500 years ago were religious nuts and capitalist pigs intent on exploiting resources. These people have always been a part of us (and us them, for that matter). It’s just that every once in a while, these nut jobs run the show.

It also seems to me that it’s possible to make the argument that what happened on Tuesday isn’t really a “moral referendum” per se; what happened is the democrats just “lost” because the republicans ran a better campaign. We had a lot of faith in getting young people and other first time voters to the polls, but despite the pictures the showed on TV, not enough of them turned out. The dems had this big and flashy rock n’ roll tour to get people on their side, and the repubs went low-key and to traditional places like churches and such. But it turns out that, despite the efforts, young people don’t vote– or, perhaps more accurately, there just aren’t enough of them to make that much of a difference. The dems probably would have been better if we could have gotten “stars” like Bob Barker, Andy Rooney, and/or Andy Griffith (is he still alive?) to go out and do a tour for Kerry in retirement communities. (Imagine the crowds screaming “Matlock for Kerry! Matlock for Kerry!”)

And of course, there always has been Kerry’s personality problem. I’m not trying to say that Kerry wasn’t the best candidate for the dems to put forward– he won the primaries fair and square, and I think any sort of argument along the lines of “maybe we should of gone with Howard Dean” is just not fair. But Kerry did have a problem… connecting, I think. Bush is a big idiot, but he’s also comes across as a simple and a “nice guy.” Kerry is smart, but he out-thinks himself too much and he doesn’t seem approachable. I heard some pundit on some show talking about how since the 60s, the candidate who has the broadest “popular” appeal is the one that wins. And even though he’s a rich bastard from a political dynasty family (not to mention the President), Bush won the “who would you want to have a beer with” contest.

Well, we’ll see what happens. A number of people have pointed out that had Kerry gotten in there, he would have been blamed with the mess that Bush made in Iraq and beyond. That will probably help the dems in 2008.

Now I gotta go shop for a “Don’t blame me– I voted for Kerry” and/or a “Hillary 08” bumper-sticker….

Okay, okay, this is kind of a political post too, but the reason why I’m putting this here is because I can really see using this stuff in a course that has something to do with “visual rhetoric:”

I came across this post at boing-boing where a reader came up with a “purple map” graphic that reflects what happens if you try to reflect actual percentages of the vote instead of the more simple “winner take all, red for Republicans, blue for Democrats” map we’ve all seen on TV news. Here it is:

Now, just to again point out the contrast here, see this map from USA Today, which reflects the “winner take all” colors county by county and which is explained and discussed a bit in this article here:

If those visuals aren’t “rhetorical,” I don’t know what image would be…

I don’t really have a lot of time to write here now (I need to get caught up with my life after mourning the election results and the state of the union), but I came across this site, http://www.surveymonkey.com/, and I thought I’d make a link to it before I forgot about it. A grad student working on a project circulated an email in the English department, asking folks to take a survey with this service. I did, I thought it worked pretty slick, and I found out that surveymonkey is the thing driving it all.

Prett cool; I need to check it out a bit more and add it to a list of links and resources for the research methods class I’m teaching in the winter…

A friend of mine sent me this:

Pretty accurate description, I’d say…

* I’m listening to NPR this morning, and they’re talking to people about how they voted and why. One guy said “I voted for Bush because he’s made a big mess and I think he needs to clean up his own mess,” or something to that effect. AARRRGGGHHH!!!

* I don’t know if this really was “the most important election in our lifetimes,” as it was advertised. Maybe, maybe not, I guess we have to see what happens. Or maybe I’m saying this because I don’t want this to be that important of an election…

* Bush says he wants to “reach out” to people who voted for Kerry. Yeah, right. He wants to “reach out” to them so he and his black-booted thugs can get our fingerprints and mugshots into a “bad citizen” database or something….

* When you factor in the “no gay marriage” amendments that passed everywhere with the Bush/Chenney “be afraid” campaign, I think what you get is a country that hateful and scarred, and increasingly retreating into its own and away from the rest of the world. A number of years ago, right wing nut job Pat Buchanan got into trouble for proposing a “fortress America” strategy with foreign policy. That seems to be about where we’re at.

* I have been reading the Daily Kos site a lot lately, and I liked this post quite a bit. I really hope that the democrats do take a time to seriously look at themselves, and I also hope that what they decide is that they too need to appeal to their base and that they try to revive the idea of liberalism in this country. But if this election pushes the part to appeal even more to the middle, then I’m changing my voter registration status.

* On the bright side of things:

–The state in which I live and most of the states I identify with (because I’m from there, I have lots of relatives and/or friends there, I have lived there, etc.) are blue. Well, except for Virginia, where I lived for five years, and also for Ohio, though that was while in Bowling Green and I never really “identified” with them. And it looks like Iowa still hasn’t decided things.

— Nader was a non-factor. Of course, if the dems try to become “Republican light” in 2008, I suspect Nader will be a factor again, and he might even get my vote.

— In Washtenaw county, 60 or 65% of folks voted “no” to proposal 2.

— Will’s elementary school voted for Kerry, so maybe there is hope for the future.

Oddly enough, less than 12 hours after the 2004 presidential election has more or less been settled, the “terror alert” level has gone from yellow in most of the country but orange in DC and NYC to yellow everywhere. Look at Bert in the lower right side of this blog. Coincidence? Nah….

This will probably be the last (quasi)political rant I’ll post here for a while, though that won’t stop me from posting about politics on my unofficial and life blog. But the disappointing (apparent) results of election got me to thinking this morning about the word that Kerry and every other Democrat ran away from, and the word that Bush and every other Republican (or so it seemed) wanted to hang on the Democratic opponent: liberal.

As in “he’s too liberal for America,” or “the most liberal member of congress,” or “he’s liberal and out of touch.”

How did that word become like that?

So one of the things I was thinking about while getting ready to get the election behind me and get on with my day is what is out there on the web? Is there a “liberal advocate” page of some sort? Well, consider this:

* I just did a google search for liberal; what I got was links to various “Liberal Parties” in the UK, Canada, and Australia; some links about the book What Liberal Media?; and a link to a web site called Liberal Slant, a kind of amateurish-looking site that complains about corporate-owned media but which also begins, with absolutely no sense of irony, with a place to shop at the Liberal Slant Online store.

* If you go to http://www.liberal.org, you get a message indicating that the domain name is for sale. (The person who owns this domain obviously is not aware that liberals don’t have the kind of money this person probably wants for the name.) If you go to www.liberal.com or www.liberal.net, you get web sites that have one thing or another to do with Liberal, Kansas.

* I did come across a page called Turn Left, but that page hasn’t been updated since 2001 or so.

I don’t have the answer to all of this fear with the word “liberal,” but clearly, what has happened here is that “Liberals” (like me, I might add) have somehow let this term be captured by conservatives. In the process of doing so, what used to be thought of as merely “liberal” now is more or less “right of center,” and what people think of now as “conservative” would have been described as “reactionary” just a few years ago.

Perhaps though what we need is a movement by Liberals to reclaim the term. The analogy I’m thinking of here is with the word “queer,” a term that was (and I suppose in many circles still is) a derogatory term that was recaptured as a term of empowerment, as in “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it,” and the academic field/discipline/study of “Queer Theory.”

This analogy might not work entirely, especially considering the fact that amendments and other measures to ban gay marriage passed in every state where they were advanced, including Michigan. But my point is the same. Liberals and other left-leaning people have allowed conservatives define them; I think Liberals need to re-embrace the term and define what it means once again.

* See this very interesting map at C-SPAN. As far as I can tell, it’s the best one out there.

* As I write this, there’s good reasons to believe that Ohio really is still too close to call, despite the fact that all the media outlets (including NPR!) are making it sound like it’s over. I just saw some reporter on CNN talking about how there were ballots in Ohio coming in from individual voting precincts as late as 4 am. And yet, there are lots of media outlets other than Fox talking about how Bush has it won. Rowe and Card want to declare victory, and thankfully, Kerry’s people are saying “not yet, pal.” Remember Florida my friends, remember Florida….

* If Kerry wins, it would mean he would win with less than a majority of the popular vote, which, if we were writing a Greek tragedy, would be completely appropriate. Obviously, I am a fan of Greek tragedy.

* If Bush wins, I think it means some pretty scary shit is going to hit the fan in the next few years. I heard some commentators last night talking about how Bush will have to make some concessions to the Democrats, that he will govern in the next four years from the middle, that he will appoint some Democrats to cabinet positions. Don’t bet on it, especially with the dem losses in congress. I think a more likely scenerio is an increase presence of the police state, more tax cuts for the wealthy, more sanctioned displays of Christianity, a stacked Supreme Court set to overturn things like Roe v. Wade, more war, more war, and more war.

Like I said a few days ago, my only hope is that things get so bad that there’s a swing the other way in 2008.

* The Democrats are stupid. I didn’t want to see them lose as much as they did in congress, but frankly, I’m glad Dashell lost. Stupid idiot. His “leadership” of the Senate in 2002 is what set up the Bushies in the war and for Republican gains that year. He set this whole thing up.

And what happens next, assuming Kerry loses or even if Kerry wins? The Dems are lacking for a leader, and my guess is that their initial reactions are to become more like Republicans, which I am completely convinced would be stupid stupid stupid. Making the party look like “Republican light” isn’t going to win votes; making the party look like something different, maybe even re-invoking the “L” word, would represent a choice. And look: if the party is going to go down in flames, I’d personally rather see it go down for the right causes.

* Americans are stupid. Supposedly, people voted for Bush because of the “war” on terror, because of Iraq, because of his morality. We are prosecuting the “war” on terror by holding people without representation in Cuba, by snooping into what they check out of the public library, by forgetting about Osma. We’ve gotten into a war in Iraq based on bald-faced lies– lies, I want to point out, that not one Democrat (including Kerry) was willing to actually call “lies.” We’re in a war that is looking more unwinnable, that has already killed around 10,000 Iraqis (never mind the Americans killed and injured that we already know about), and that has pissed off the rest of the world.

And Bush is seen as the “moral” candidate. Here’s a guy who has made more people poor, who sees the rich as his “base,” who made the world more unsafe, who has lied to the world in a variety of different ways, who supports the death penalty, who believes he is infallible, and who carries around a Bible. It has never been more clear to me that “morality” and “religion” are two entirely different things, and here we are, a country at war against “terror” (which seems to basically mean “Islam”), a country that is the only true super-power, here we are, supposedly the “land of the free” and all of that, and we as a people are more or less voting for a theocracy.

* Oh yeah, in Michigan (and everywhere else where it was on the ballot) gay marriage and/or civil unions are a big no-no. Great, just great…

* Maybe we can move to Canada and commute to Ypsilanti from there….

* Something else I just thought about: I was just looking at the map, the one I linked to at the top of this page, and it reminds me of something: the Civil War. Seriously, look at it. It really is damn close in terms of “borders” between the way things were in the middle of the 19th century. Are we a country moving to another “war” between the states? Probably not war in the sense of shooting at each other, but perhaps an internal “cold” war of sorts?

I don’t generally talk about my politics here– certainly not as much as I do here— but I thought, given the day and all, I’d comment briefly.

First, go out and vote, no matter who you are going to vote for. That’s obvious. But still, you should show up to class. I had one student ask if I would cancel class for election day, and while I did think about it for a moment, that seemed to be going too far to me. Besides, the polls are open in Michigan from 7 am to 8 pm, so presumably, everyone ought to be able to find some time in there to get to their polling station.

Second, it all seemed very orderly to me this morning, not at all like the sort of “chaos” reports that I’ve seen on TV as of late. There were extra volunteers at the polls (including a guy who used to work at EMU who teaches out at Henry Ford CC– hi Matt!), everything was very organized, and despite the big crowd at the off-time of 9:30 am, I was in and out of there in 10 minutes. So don’t let the lines scare you.

Third, I voted for Kerry. I don’t try to wear my politics on my sleave in my teaching or in my writing here, but it probably also isn’t surprising that an English professor interested in things like technology and post-structualist theories of reading and writing is a “liberal.” Actually, I’m much more liberal than Kerry, but given the two party system and the alternative, it’s a pretty clear choice for me. But just to “spice things up” a bit, I voted for the Green Party candidates who were running for the board of regents at Michigan State, Wayne State, and the University of Michigan. What I should have done for the Wayne State post is written in Jeff Rice….

Fourth, it is very clear to me that anyone at this point who thinks they know how this thing is going to turn out this year is either crazy, self-deluded, or both. I’ve seen on TV and heard on the radio smart people making smart predictions one way or the other, and while I’m hoping for the best, I’m prepared for the worse, too. I did enjoy this story on NPR’s “Morning Edition” about weird things that predict the outcome of the election. Nickelodeon fans picked Kerry, and that’s good enough for me, I guess.