Lia Romeo, co-author of 11,002 Things to Be Miserable About, spent the past week guest blogging on Jewcy.  She shared all sorts of misery with us, including the miserable beginning to her book deal, the misery of being at the inauguration ceremonies, the misery we come into contact with every day, the misery in history, and, last but by all means not least, the misery of New York.  Not quite on Xanax yet?  Buy the book!

Although it’s generally agreed that Obama’s inauguration speech was “not much”’ as Commentary’s editor John Podhoretz wrote, I still want to delve into one of the main theses of this speech:

 

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.  And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

 

I don’t think many serious people will argue that doing good for the world is, well, good. That feeding the hungry, if possible, is desirable. It is also not a novelty to espouse the Wilsonian message of the need not to be indifferent “to suffering outside our borders” (it’s called “Wilsonian” for a reason).

But I’d like to take issue with the last sentence of this paragraph, because I think that at the end of the day it all comes down to this: has the world really changed? And if it did, how?

Obama didn’t elaborate on this “change” assertions – he similarly avoided explaining his message of “change” during the campaign. It is essential to understand what kind of change Obama sees in the world, since he builds around it his call for America “to change with it”. How can one adapt oneself to changes around the world, when one doesn’t understand how the world has changed?

Like many leaders before him, Obama crafted a message to the crowds, and like many before him he tends to see the world as if everything has started afresh when he was elected. The world has changed when the first Bush was in office (end of the Soviet Empire). It has changed under Clinton (the internet), it has changed under the second Bush (9/11) – and going backwards we can easily find changes in every term of every president. Some bigger changes, some smaller changes. We see them as they happen, and we try to figure out what impact they will have in the future, and we try to adapt accordingly, sometimes successfully, sometimes less so.

The problem I have with Obama’s message is that I don’t know what change in the world he talks about. It must be something new – otherwise, why would Obama bother talking about things that we already know. And it must be something related to changes in other countries that also require change in American behavior – that’s the whole point of mentioning it.

I can try and guess what he means: maybe it’s really the war on terror, and his assumption that making the world safer will only be possible if other nations are more prosperous and less hungry. This is also an idea as old as the American republic – almost a cliché - and it’s also a matter for debate: it is not really clear whether prosperous countries are inherently less dangerous to the world than poor ones. Case in point: Iran. Case in point: Saudi Arabia. Of course, one can also find less well to do environments serving as fertile ground for despair and terror: Somalia, Afghanistan, Gaza, Egypt.

But since both prosperous areas and not-so-prosperous areas serve as launching pad to terrorists and agents of instability, one has to ask oneself if it’s really the hunger, or something else that makes the world dangerous. A reasonable conclusion – also not new – is that the real reason for such diseases is lack of democracy and corrupt leadership or chaotic atmosphere. Gaza – leadership which doesn’t care about the people. Somalia – no leadership. Afghanistan – same. Egypt – autocratic regime. Etc Etc.

And of course, this doesn’t mean that feeding the hungry can’t be an end of itself for many other reasons. Reasons mainly categorized as “idealistic” rather than “pragmatic”. That’s why I always thought that Obama’s message of pragmatic government – Hillary Clinton called it – has limits. As I wrote here:

 

[A]t the end of January, when the Obama administration has to start making decisions, its pragmatism will only help if there’s a framework of ideas and beliefs guiding it toward the right decisions. It is the pragmatic means that Obama hopes to be able to use–but there also has to be an end.

 

If Obama’s idealism is one that’s guiding him toward feeding the hungry around the world – I’m all for it. However, the world hasn’t changed in that respect, and if it did, it’s probably for the better: less hungry today than it was yesterday. But if Obama is trying to tell us that feeding the hungry will be the way with which he intends to fight dangerous, bad people – there’s reason to doubt the receipt, and even in these days of justified but rather mind-numbing celebration -- also worry about the future.

Yesterday I wrote about how, after spending the past year of my life writing 11,002 Things to Be Miserable About, I've become an expert in seeing the misery in just about anything.  And so today, in honor of an important and exciting event in our nation's history, I present a list of Things About the Inauguration to Be Miserable About.

The $150 to $170 million total cost

The fact that there are only 5000 portable toilets for 2 million people

The upscale toilets that were brought in for members of Congress and dignitaries, but are off-limits to everyone else  

Pepsi's adaptation of Obama's "O" symbol into the Pepsi swoosh

All of the disappointed fashion designers Michelle Obama didn't end up wearing

Scalpers who sold free inaugural tickets for $99 and up

The hour-long lines for the DC Metro 

The scam in which teenagers paid thousands of dollars to represent their states "for" the inauguration, but received no tickets

The overwhelmed cell phone networks and dropped calls

The long list of very ordinary items prohibited at the parade, including bottles, strollers, and umbrellas

The 30-degree weather

The fact that the Capitol was built by slaves

The possibility that pregnant women who live on Capitol Hill will go into labor during the inauguration, and be unable to get to the hospital due to the crowds

The miles of gridlocked traffic in and around Washington

The impossibility of Obama's living up to everything that everyone is expecting from him

Okay, I meant to make a list of 44 things, in honor of our 44th president... but honestly, I'm having a hard time coming up with anything else.  The media, typically a reliable source of gloom and doom, is full of stories about low-income teenagers receiving free trips to the capitol, racially segregated churches coming together to offer hospitality to those attending the event, and families setting aside their political differences to celebrate together.  It's a tough day to be a writer who specializes in misery. But I have to admit, it's a pretty exciting day to be an American.

Lia Romeo, co-author of 11,002 Things to Be Miserable About, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she'll be here all week. Stay tuned.

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Preview 11,002 Things to Be Miserable About, visit the book's website, or check out book trailers and videos on YouTube.

Lia Romeo, co-author of 11,002 Things to Be Miserable About, is guest blogging this week as one of Jewcy's Lit Klatsch bloggers. The book, which Lia wrote with her brother, Nick, is a list of 11,002 reasons to be unhappy, a spoof on 14,000 Things to Be Happy About.

It was 1998, and I was feeling depressed.  I was a senior in high school, I had small breasts and big glasses, and boys didn't like me.  A friend, thinking I needed some cheering up, gifted me with a copy of a little white book with a bright, crayoned smiley face on the spine: 14,000 Things to Be Happy About.

14,000 Things to Be Happy About, which has sold over a million copies, is a stream-of-consciousness list of life's small joys.  "Baseball."  "Beef brisket."  "Believing in one great love."  And 13,997 more in the same vein. 

It failed to resonate. 

My only experience with baseball was being last-picked in elementary school, I knew too much about industrial meat processing to enjoy eating beef anything, and if there was only one great love, I was fairly sure I'd never find it.

My brother Nick suggested that it would be funny to write a parody: 14,000 Things to Be Miserable About.  I thought that was a fantastic idea.

And so we did nothing about it.  For the next ten years.

Then, about a year ago, Nick and I were sitting around drinking wine, and we decided to look up literary agents that specialized in humor books.  By this time, the ubiquity of the internet had made it easy to do so without investing $27.99 in a Writer's Market directory, which would have meant relying on the roaches under my sink as my primary protein source for the next week.  

So we put together a query letter, and, shortly thereafter, we had a book deal.  That was when we realized that the downside of getting a book deal is that we'd actually have to write a book. 

Specifically, we'd have to make a list of 11,002 things to be miserable about.  (Our publisher, Abrams Image, cut the number down from the original 14,000 so the book could be sold at a lower price point.)  We'd each have to come up with 5,501 things that sucked - more, actually, because inevitably there were some duplicates.  ("Mad Cow Disease."  "Machiavelli."  "The Mongol invasion.")

We started by passing a legal pad back and forth across my kitchen table.  Nick wrote: "Death."  I wrote: "Life."  Nick wrote: "Hitler."  I wrote: "Erectile dysfunction."   And we went from there.

Of course, spending six months working on the book - and then the past three months writing and maintaining a blog (a collection of the most depressing facts, figures, news, photos, and video from around the globe) - may not have been the healthiest thing for my state of mind.  The other night I went to a friend's party, and while everyone else was singing "Happy Birthday," I was thinking about the artificial flavorings in the cake. 

And so tomorrow, in honor of a historic and exciting day in our country's history, I'll present a list of Things About the Inauguration to Be Miserable About.  I'm a huge Obama fan, and I'm as excited about the new administration as anybody... but I've become an expert at seeing the misery in just about anything.

Lia Romeo, co-author of 11,002 Things to Be Miserable About, is guest blogging on Jewcy, and she'll be here all week. Stay tuned.

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Preview 11,002 Things to Be Miserable About, visit the book's website, or see book trailers and videos on YouTube.

With just one week to go until the Inauguration (you know, the historic one, Barack Obama, first African-American president, blah blah blah) everyone is still trying to get in on the action.  I was even considering making a pilgrimage to America's political holy land until I realized I'd have to sleep in a cold car.  But I may be in luck! That is, if I have the patience to room with a brooding Republican on the eve of a Democratic high holiday.  One ad on Cragislist just goes to show that profilt has no prejudice:

In a search of a room in DC so that you can spend Jan. 20 standing in the bitter winter cold with thousands of like-minded souls watching the historic transfer of power from one Harvard grad to another? Look no further.

Me: Heartless, greedy right-wing oppressive type looking to make a buck.

You: Obama's election was Christmas/your first kiss/May Day all wrapped into one. You dutifully wore his button -- which you have yet to remove -- contributed money to his campaign from your non-profit job and chanted "yes we can" as if it were the 11th commandment. A strange void now exists in your life and -- like an old hippie looking to recapture the spirit of Woodstock -- you are undertaking a pilgramage to Washington for one last gulp of the Kool-Aid.

Along with my bedroom you will have access to the house's many amenities including cable television (not that you watch much TV) for viewing Keith Olberman's latest unhinged rants and CNN in high-def. Wireless internet means that the Huffington Post and DailyKos are only a click away on your MacBook. American flags and other patriotic paraphernalia in the room can be removed upon request.

The house is located in the diverse neighborhood of Adams Morgan with people of many different skin pigmentations that will allow you to revel in your tolerance. Rest assured, however, that this diversity does not extend to ideology and that you are sure to march lock-step with the prevailing sentiment ensuring that your most strongly held beliefs remain unchallenged.

Easily accessible subway and bus stops will help ensure a minimal carbon footprint while fair trade coffee is never more than a few steps away at any number of independently-owned establishments. Nearby non-chain bookstores similarly mean that tomes such as Mao's Little Red Book, Chomsky's latest masterpiece or additional copies of The Audacity of Hope can be easily purchased either for yourself or as early holiday shopping.

Rather than state a price I am requesting that you bid on this fabulous opportunity to ensure profit maximization on my part so that I can better weather the Bush Recession.

 

Hell hath no fury like a homosexual seemingly scorned. That seems to be the lesson learned by the media in the immediate aftermath of Barack Obama's announcement that he will have Rick Warren - pastor of the 20,000-member Saddleback megachurch in Lake Forest, California - deliver the invocation at his presidential inauguration next month. Warren is most famous for his bestselling book, "The Purpose-Driven Life," his godly attempt to imitate motivational speaker Tony Robbins, as well as the genuine good works he does in poverty-stricken corners of the world. Lately, however, he's been involved in less benign activities, namely the campaign to pass California's Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment stripping gays of their court-ordered right to marry. Pastor Rick represents the new face of evangelical Christianity in America in that he puts a friendly sheen on homophobia, delivering the requisite line that he supports "equal rights" for everybody and that some of his best friends are gay, he just doesn't want them to have the same rights as heterosexuals. Oh, and legitimizing their "lifestyles," he says, would be akin to accepting bestiality and incest.

Gay activists were understandably angered by this announcement, and they made that anger felt. Joe Solomonese, head of the Human Rights Campaign, the country's most prominent gay rights organization, issued a public letter to Obama calling his decision a "genuine blow to LGBT Americans." The denizens of the Huffington Post have been expressing their rage, and the popular gay blog Queerty went so far as to claim that Obama "spat on the gays." Adorable lesbian Rachel Maddow called it "the first big mistake of his post-election politicking."

Color me not outraged. In part because amidst all the righteous indignation (something that professional gay activists never seem to lack) over Obama's selection of Warren to deliver his inaugural invocation was his simultaneous choice of Joseph Lowery, a black pastor, civil rights leader and, important for the purposes of the controversy du jour, gay civil union supporter, to deliver the benediction, or news that Tammy Baldwin, the only openly-gay Congresswoman, was named an honorary co-chairman of Obama's Inauguration Committee. "I'll leave those who are upset to their calling," Lowery remarked when asked for his views on l'affaire Warren, suggesting that the perpetually-outraged gay Left might want to reconsider their behavior with what they claim their life's work to be. Did the dons of the gay lobby ever stop to question whether Lowery and Baldwin's presence on the dais would similarly upset the Bible-thumpers? Not for nothing did John Gallagher and Chris Bull call the gay movement and the religious right, "Perfect Enemies." More than one person has seriously suggested to me that the Reverend Fred Phelps, he of "God Hates Fags" fame, might actually be a plant on the gay rights lobby's payroll.  

Invocation, benediction, what's the difference? Apparently, a lot. "The person selected to deliver the invocation has the honor of serving as the spiritual representative for the entire nation," writes Leah McElrath Renna. Perhaps I missed it, but there is no "spiritual representative" of our constitutional republic, and Renna does her cause no bit of good by ascribing such official significance upon a private citizen like Warren, a man whom most Americans did not know about until gay rights activists raised such a stink, and upon further investigation sounds like a pretty nice guy not deserving of all the insults heaped upon him. The uproar over Warren has the detriment of confirming one of the worst stereotypes of homosexuals: hysteria. That's because Warren is the lowest common denominator of the socially conservative evangelicals. Up until the Proposition 8 fight, his political involvement extended to such hot-button, "culture war" issues as fighting African AIDS and poverty. Aside from the incest/bestiality slip (which was an effort, however clumsily executed, to make a slippery slope argument rather than a serious attempt at morally equating daughter/dog love to homosexuality) Warren has never really used his high public profile or pulpit to preach hatred of gay people, something that can hardly be said of the long list of Elmer Gantryesque charlatans the GOP has surrounded itself with over the past 30 years. Asked what was a "greater threat to the American family - divorce or gay marriage," Warren answered, "That's a no brainer. Divorce. There's no doubt about it," which makes him far more honest than most politically involved conservative evangelical preachers. Count me as being a member of the pragmatist gay camp (not to be confused with theater, dance or other camps), encapsulated by my friend Chris Crain, who writes, "It is a stroke of political brilliance to recruit a conservative megapastor in support of a president-elect who is arguably the most pro-gay, pro-choice and progressive in our history."

The problem for gay activists is that many Americans agree with Rick Warren when it comes to same-sex love. And these people, numbering in the over 100 million range, are not going to be budged in their views by hectoring activists who call them bigots (even though that's what many of them are). Now, I'm of the firm belief that these debates will be moot in 20 years, when the older generation kicks the bucket and the near-universally gay-accepting Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers take the reins of government. Whatever political victories they feel that they've won from Proposition 8 and the other marriage amendments across the country, the anti-gay forces of reaction in this country are gasping their last breath. The honest ones among them acknowledge this, if not publicly. We will hasten the day of gay equality by engaging respectfully with them and winning over the persuadable ones (many of whom, I bet, are followers of Warren), rather than calling them names.  

In that vein, gays would do well to store their gunpowder for the truly significant legislative battles that will no doubt be fought in the years ahead. Getting rid of the odious and national security-weakening "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" regulation, repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and Matthew Shepard hate crimes law will all be possible over the next four years now that we have a Democratic president and Congress committed - at least on paper - to effecting these positive changes. If gays had given Obama some much-needed slack on Rick Warren, perhaps he'd feel a political debt to us when these truly significant issues come up for debate. But how sincere - or politically threatening - will gay complaints about administration foot-dragging on issues that actually affect millions of gay and lesbian people sound in light of the unwarranted outrage that's been generated over the guy who's going to deliver a two-minute reading that no one will remember? Attacking the President-Elect who campaigned as the most pro-gay candidate in American history over an issue as irrelevant as this one, I fear, makes us look like we're crying wolf. And we all know how that fable ended.