A Rags To Bitches Story

So I found out, and never mind how, there's no reason to get into it on a Sunday, that my fine young friend buys reusable cotton flannel menstrual pads, which I didn't even know were a thing, but they are. And I was grateful yet again for being a post-menopausal liberal.

Because if I were a liberal woman still in the throes of unasked-for fertility, I would then have to go purchase these myself, and use them and wash them out in order to keep yet another single-use throwaway item out of the landfill, because that is the curse of a liberal, to worry about such things, and because it's not as if the throwaway kind ever saved much on laundry anyway, since there wasn't a single month in forty years in which I did not manage to doody on something I shouldn't have, even if I wore two corks and a pad so large it has a tag on it that says DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF LAW.

If I were a pre-menopausal conservative I wouldn't have to give this a second thought. I would be worried about some colored person breaking into my house or being blown up by a Muslim war refugee or raped by a Mexican or the fact that God is both all-powerful and somehow kept out of the schools or that some liberal is going to force me to use curly light bulbs or some stinking Socialist is going to steal my Medicare or someone is going to call me a racist just for having the guts to call a spade a spade or, and this is the very worst thing, my own husband might some day be accused of something he didn't do, something that totally never happened on account of there being no witnesses except that one really drunk dude who hasn't remembered anything he's done in thirty years. Any woman could accuse him of such a thing at any time and then go cash her check from the First National Bank Of Libtards and it wouldn't matter how many creative explanations my husband made up to explain the naughty bits in his yearbook. And his life would be ruined unless he makes it to the Supreme Court and is right back on top. As it were.

As a conservative woman I would be able to assume that life began when I was born, and being able to wear sweaters inside in the summer and drive my Ford Extortion to the corner store and throw away a plastic pod every time I make coffee is just what the world owes me. Certainly I would assert there was no life before pads and tampons. Just because women survived for a million years without them until a hundred years ago does not mean that we could survive without them today.

They did, though. Admittedly, history has not been overly interested in the concerns of women. Hypatia is an exception. That 5th-century mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher once discouraged an unwanted suitor by smacking him with her menstrual rags, although some scholars dispute this account, pointing out that she could have just waved them around and he'd have dropped dead of his own accord. Unfortunately, Hypatia was a woman of great and beguiling beauty, otherwise known as Satanic wiles. She and her big brain and beauty got into a nest of early Christians and that was pretty much that, for soon enough she was murdered, sliced up, dragged in pieces through the street, and burned.

And for this alone I might have donned the cotton rag in Hypatia's name. But now I don't have to, thank God. Or whoever's in charge.

SCOTUS, SCROTUS

My sister Margaret was a towering soul holstered in a tiny body. She was easy to see over, but impossible to overlook. Until she got old.

"Old women are invisible," she complained.

I'm beginning to see what she meant, but I'm not complaining. It's a mixed bag, being ignored. It's not so good when you're trying to get a clerk's attention in a store. But it can work to your advantage if you're, say, trying to assemble some bomb-making materials with a mind toward civic engagement.

But a girl does feel dismissed if she can't even get any action from airport security. If they won't even wave a wand at you when you flash your postal I.D., leak spittle, and bring up Dick Cheney, you can pretty much figure your value as a searchable object of desire has plummeted. You might as well not exist. It can be dispiriting.

But trust the U.S. Supreme Court to hitch the buckboard up to old Dobbin and ride to the rescue! They're coming through for the little guy at last. Some of us had been a little dubious about this group. The Democrats had spent two years trying to crowbar a little daylight between the insurance companies and their profits, and finally cobbled together a bit of improvement for us all, with a not-nearly-socialist-enough piece of legislation called the Affordable Care Act. Or Obamacare, as it is derisively referred to by people who view Obama and Care with equal disdain. And now many of us suspect that the Court is about to knock the whole thing sideways on the grounds that it tramples on the American credo ("You Can't Make Me"). Because if we are lucky enough to get any health insurance, given the shape we're in, we would rather pay a boatload for it, by God. We're not cheap. The Court just heard the case and various lines of questioning have put the outcome in doubt, with some of the justices playing things pretty cagey. Except for Justice Clarence Thomas, who, as always, just said exactly what was on his mind.

Well, it will be a bit before we find out whether the insurance industry will get its money's worth out of this court, but in the meantime, as I suggested, SCOTUS really came through for the little people. Thanks to a recent ruling, the police can throw in a free rectal examination whenever we get hauled in for any little thing. Even minor infractions, like looking all wrong for the neighborhood, can win you a complimentary probe. This court decision only restores the rights of the state. If this sort of thing wasn't a proper role of law enforcement, it would never have been called "copping a feel." And the average American can scarcely whine about being refused insurance for a rectal exam and then turn around and whine about getting a freebie.

The Supreme Court is only plugging a hole in the system. Torrents of contraband are flowing in a direct pipeline from America's buttholes to its jails. And the police have a legitimate interest in stemming that flow. Which means such a procedure couldn't possibly be used as a tool of humiliation. And that's good news! Because even an ignorable, innocent-looking woman of advanced middle age like myself might still have an act of civil disobedience left in her, or get a little mouthy during a public demonstration. And this ruling means I still have the chance one day of hearing that snap of latex gloves behind me. The snapping sound that means someone still wants to know how I really feel, deep inside.

And we thought they didn't care. Thank you, Justices Roberts, Kennedy, Scalia, Alito, and Thomas--take a bow! No, the other way.

A Fine, Fat Fellow

We were ushered into a spacious room for the press conference. A row of people stood in the back, holding hands and humming quietly. They were barely visible behind Corporation, who was even wider than anyone had imagined. He was wall-to-wall. A trim man in a suit and sunglasses was wedged in on one side of him, expressionless.

Corporation unfurled a pudgy hand and acknowledged our presence. "Please. Call me Corpo," he said. "Thank you all for coming."

He clasped his hands together and took a deep breath. "You can't imagine the pain I've endured all these years, with people denying my very humanity. But I'm just like you," he began, reaching behind himself and executing a delicate, common-man tug at his underwear. "I put my pants on one leg at a time."

Pants?

"Pants, airs, the electorate, the point is I'm putting something on. The point is I have feelings. I'm not a machine. I have dreams, I have assets, I have liabilities, I have workers all over the world. Some of those youngsters in Sri Lanka, my God--" Corpo paused briefly to gain control over his emotions--"bless their tiny little bones. They're worth a hundred of my workers in America. I mean it."

The man in the suit and sunglasses leaned over and whispered something in Corpo's ear.

"I'm just speaking literally, of course. All of my workers--hell, all of us--are utterly equal in my eyes. From the coal worker in West Virginia, to the shareholder, to my little buddies Credit Default Swap and Sammy Alito, we're all human, we all have a voice."

His own had begun to tremble. "They're like members of my own family. I swear, I couldn't love them any better. What would I do without them? I'll never know, fortunately; there are always more. And after the coal is gone, and the timber is cut down, and the shale

oil is extracted, and the surviving workers are taking their well-earned leisure with their black lung settlements or what-have-you, I'll still be here. Not for them, necessarily, but for their children." Overcome, Corpo reached into his pocket and mopped his nose with a damp Haitian.

But what will their children do? Say, in West Virginia. After the coal is gone and the mountaintops have been blasted into memory.

"Oh, the opportunities I have provided! Just think what the little scamps can do on a nice flat surface that they couldn't do before. Marbles. Lawn bowling. It's all good. Where the Lord closes a mine shaft he opens a trapdoor."

The row of people behind began to hum louder and sway back and forth. The music swelled. Corpo's pants swelled.

"And now, thanks to the highest court in the land, my rights have been protected. My God-given rights as an American."

Free speech?

"How quaint of you! That's been done. Every Tom, Dick and Harry has that. Even the ladies, the dear little chatterboxes! Where's the value? No, my friends, free speech is yesterday's news, now that Expensive Speech is the law of the land."

The man in the sunglasses turned and applied a little water with a turkey baster on the side of Corpo's face. The chorus behind burst into song. Corpo dabbed moisture from the corner of his eye and began to sway with the group.

"We shall overrun....some....daaaaay!"