Picket Fence Post

A very kind BBC reporter sought me out last week to discuss the idea of a “mom vote” and how it might play out in tomorrow’s election. After our lively discussion at a Brookline coffee shop, she put together a report about women and the U.S. presidential race. he link to the BBC radio interview is here.

Also, did you happen to read that Boston Globe piece this weekend about one’s political leanings being related to your DNA? I’m just not buyin’ it.

By the way . . . am I the only one with election fever? I’m at once excited about tomorrow night — which will make history one way or another – while I’m also suffering from election fatigue. Makes no sense.

Item #1: Stone Soup Book

I love the way cartoonist Jan Eliot’s mind works. In her Stone Soup comics, she’s able to put into pictures what I labor to do with words. So, a few months ago, when Eliot e-mailed me to ask me if I’d write a blurb for her new collection of cartoons, This Might NOT Be Pretty, I felt honored.

“Jan Eliot has been spying on my family,” reads the blurb I wrote that’s on the back cover of Eliot’s newly-released book, the seventh in the Stone Soup series. “There’s no other explanation why Stone Soup so accurately captures the absurdly realistic yet painfully funny antics that go on in my house. Stone Soup is a window into the gloriously flawed American family.”

The book’s great for when you need to know that you’re not the only one who, as you’re raising your children, finds yourself in patently preposterous situations.

Item #2: ‘Desperate Housewives’ Trailer

Season five of Desperate Housewives, a once razor-sharp satire of modern life in the ‘burbs, is on the horizon. (Premieres September 28.) This season the show shifts five years into the future where everything has supposedly changed for the Wisteria Lane residents, most markedly for Eva Longoria’s character Gabby Solis, now a non-glamorous mother of two, while some of Felicity Huffman’s character’s kids are now teens and on a first name basis with the friendly folks at the local juvenile detention center.

Huffman has said that the half-decade time jump has invigorated Desperate Housewives’ writers and that the characters’ slate of stories has been wiped clean. I certainly hope so. The show has lost its mojo in recent years and just hasn’t been as good as it was in season one and early on in season two. I hope it can redeem itself. And soon. I’m rooting for Huffman.

Item #3: Tonight’s Historic Moment

Regardless of your political affiliation or for whom you plan to cast your vote for president in November, there is no question that tonight’s speech by Illinois Senator Barack Obama formally accepting his party’s nomination for president is a historic one for our country, particularly coming on the 45th anniversary of the Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. That’s the iconic speech our children are shown in their classrooms every January, the one they hear when they learn about the condition of race relations in the 1960s when King spoke and why the Civil Rights Act was eventually passed.

Fast-forward four decades later, and you can now explain to your own kiddos with pride how far our country has come from that moment to this one. This is a moment they’ll want to remember.

Image credit: Amazon.com/Stone Soup.

Item #1: ‘Mommy Porn’

That is not a typo. You have not inadvertently stumbled into one of THOSE sites, the ones that would get you fired if a supervisor happened to walk by and see it on your screen.

This item is entitled “Mommy Porn” because that’s the term Boston Globe columnist Penelope Trunk used in her blog, the Brazen Careerist, to describe the media’s fawning coverage of celebrity parents when they talk about how wonderful it is to balance work and parenthood. She says the media do not tell the truth about parenting and that the celebs who are interviewed likewise are tellers of tall tales.

An excerpt:

“So look, in the interest of truth-telling, I’m telling you this: people are not being honest about what it’s like to be with kids. People are scared to admit that they would rather be at work than with their kids, because work is easier than parenting . . . If I have to read about how much someone loves their kids one more time, I’m gonna puke. Because we all know that parents love their kids. It’s not interesting. It’s not helpful. It’s not even very relevant. For anyone.

. . . So with all the [celebrity] mommy porn, the media does a lot to make us think that work life balance is possible, in the same way anorexic bodies without treatment for anorexia is possible.

So there’s real damage from mommy porn. Everyone begins thinking that every woman should be parenting gracefully while working full time. This gives people the temerity to ask me, nearly every day: Who takes care of your kids?”

It’s a button-pushing post that is sparking debate around them there Internets.

Item #2: Obamas’ Canine Debate

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his wife Michelle debated on national television whether and under what conditions the Illinois senator would keep his promise to his two young daughters to get a dog at the end of his campaign, the Los Angeles Times reported.

While speaking on Good Morning America, Michelle Obama said she thinks their 9-year-old is responsible enough to walk a dog. The senator, however, was not convinced, saying, “But whether they’re going to be responsible . . . in the middle of the winter to go walk that dog . . .” His wife jumped in, saying, “We’re getting a dog.”

Sounds like an average, American couple to me, arguing over who’s going to be getting up on those bitterly cold nights to walk the dog. Of course if Obama wins the race, he’ll have staff who can walk the dog, so he and his two daughters would be off the hook.

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