Drunken Notes from Last Night’s Republican Debate That Will Also Serve as Notes for the Next Eleven Republican Debates

SO MANY SCREENS. GLORIOUS, USELESS SCREENS.

Grip the podium for dear life or don’t? This alone will determine who becomes president.

ONE SENTENCE INTROS. It’s like a round of speed-dating where you crossed everyone off the list beforehand.

Michele Bachmann: “I’MAFORMERTAXLITIGATIONATTORNEY ALSO LIVEFREEORDIE.”

Tim Pawlenty: “I’m a neighbor.” (We call this the “hard sell.”)

Everyone but Ron Paul mentioned the kids they made? Duly impressed by the fertility represented on stage tonight.

Will a candidate perhaps answer a question in one word, as John King quixotically hopes? The answer may be “a qualified no.”

Herman Cain says lower capital gains tax to zero. WITH ELABORATE TRAIN ENGINE METAPHOR, THE FUEL FOR THE TRAIN ENGINE TO KEEP IT BURNING WITH MOMENTUM AND AREN’T TRAINS ELECTRIC NOW?

Rick Santorum can barely conceal loathing… for self? TIM PAWLENTY BLOWS HIS SHOCKED REACTION SHOT EARLY. Keep it to thirty seconds, John King scolds. (Here we realize that “honor system” = John King scolding you.)

Pawlenty is a “pro-growth” candidate. Take that, pro-shrinkage dinosaurs.

Ron Paul is stuck between Romney and Pawlenty, looking like the zoo’s least social chimpanzee.

Newt Gingrich is visibly incredulous that Mitt Romney is stealing his anti-Obama talking points.

Bachmann: “I’m looking forward to answering that question.” Too bad the announcement of her candidacy gets in the way.

Paul: LIBERTARIANISM FREE MARKETS FED CONSPIRACY AHHHHHH WHY DON’T I JUST HAVE AYN RAND’S FACE TATTOOED ON MINE SO WHENEVER I SAY SOMETHING IT COMES OUT OF AYN RAND’S MOUTH ALSO.

Bachmann’s platform: “I was the first to suggest repealing whatever groundbreaking bill you were talking about.”

Obamneycare. OBAMNEYCARE. Pawlenty distances self from coinage of “Obamneycare.” (OFUCKINGBAMNEYCARE.)

Santorum: “Tea Party is a great backstop… it’s that great backbone….” ERROR 590 FURTHER BACK-THINGS NOT FOUND.

Bachmann: Tea Party is “disaffected Democrats, people who have never been political in their lives.” DEMONSTRATES VIA PINCHING/SWOOPING HAND GESTURES.

HERMAN CAIN A BUSINESSMAN, ACCORDING TO CNN CRAWL.

Pawlenty breathing with deep focus while trying to follow Paul’s talk of reserve currency. Again.

Pawlenty: MEATPACKING BLUE COLLAR FAIR TRADE LET’S NOT BE CHUMPS WORDCLOUD.

Government is apparently nagging businesses into going away? They should stop!

Bachmann, verbatim quote: “The EPA should be renamed The Job-Killing Organization of America.” The JKOA! Has a nice ring.

Santorum: SO ANGRY ABOUT THE CAPITAL GAINS TAX, EXISTENCE OF HUMANS WHO CHALLENGE HIM.

Santorum flustered on softball pre-commercial query as to whether he prefers Leno or Conan. “Probably Leno. But I don’t watch either, sorry.” Curses self under breath, probably.

Bachmann on Elvis or Johnny Cash: “Uh, both. I have ‘Christmas with Elvis’ on my iPod!” AND NOTHING ELSE.

Paul’s official position: Bureaucrats can’t the manage the economy — let the economy manage the economy.

Romney horrified to be read back the most myopic assertion of the op-ed he just bragged about writing.

Bachmann: TARP was “a $700 billion blank check.” (Note to self: Fairly sure this is not what a blank check is; re-watch Blank Check to confirm.)

Newt says NASA should get out of the way of the private sector.

GAME-CHANGER QUESTION: IS GOVERNMENT TOO INVOLVED IN FOOD SAFETY? (Cain: “No.”)

Romney: Had a very roundabout way of calling federal disaster relief “immoral,” there.

Newt on “Dancing With The Stars” vs. “American Idol”: “AMERICAN IDOL” AND DOES NOT HESITATE TO SAY SO, DEFINITIVELY.

Paul, on question of BlackBerry or iPhone, pauses. “BlackBerry.” The man does look hungry.

Everyone insists there will be reformed Medicare, which is different from reformed healthcare. Audience glares at Santorum as he attempts to explain how Obamacare is just Medicare Part D but bad (?).

Cain: “Do what the small country of Chile did.” 10.0 BEST NEW CAMPAIGN SLOGAN.

Romney: We have ideas, but where are the president’s ideas? The Runaway 3-D Movie Industry Presents: NATIONAL TREASURE 4: THE SEARCH FOR THE PRESIDENT’S IDEAS.

Bachmann’s “President Bish” is somehow the funniest verbal slip of the night. She notes that Obama is far more eloquent than her.

Pawlenty: Protect religious people from the government!

Cain explains (exCains?) that militant Muslims are “the ones that are trying to kill us.”

Newt: “JUST SAY NO” TO PEOPLE WHO ASK TO INFILTRATE OUR COUNTRY. Excellent Nancy Reagan callback, as always.

Cain on deep-dish or thin-crust pizza: “DEEP. DISH.” (In deep voice.)

Romney on spicy or mild wings: “Oh, spicy. AND BY THE WAY BRUINS ARE UP 4–0.” So that’s the bro at the bar ski lodge that Romney is.

Bachmann: States’ rights unless gay marriage.

WHO HAS THE MOST ANTI-GAY CRED? Spoiler: everyone.

Cain actually uses the word “druthers.” (+10)

Bachmann would “keep” the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy that is not in place anymore.

Santorum: Unlike some Romneys I could name, I’M AUTHENTICALLY PRO-LIFE, FOOL. Says, “I’ve taken the bullets.” (!)

Romney: “Life starts at the beginning.” CASE CLOSED.

Paul: Becoming more marionette-, Ross Perot-like by the word.

Pawlenty reinforced Minnesota border with the Minnesota National Guard? Is that not the plot of Canadian Bacon?

Ooh, eminent domain question? WELCOME TO RON PAUL’S WHEELHOUSE, FUDRUCKERS.

Why can’t government get out of the way of the people get out of the way of the housing bubble get out of the way of the free market get out of the way of bankruptcy?

Pawlenty on Coke or Pepsi: “Coke.” MUST I AGREE WITH HIM ON SOMETHING?

Romney: We shouldn’t be helping other people fight for their independence. (P.S., France never helped us. With anything. Eat shit, France, for real.)

Pawlenty be fearmongerin’. Claims al-Qaeda “would have killed 30 million if they could have.” THE OBVIOUS FOLLOW-UP DOES NOT COME: DOES HE KNOW BECAUSE HE’S AL-QAEDA?

Bachmann pledges to “not lead from behind.”

Newt says “fundamentally” as often as he can. Must be how he turns some Manchurian Candidate on and off.

To paraphrase Cain paraphrasing Cain’s grandmother: “IT’S A MESS AW IT’S AN ABSOLUTE MESS.”

Question: What will you do to cut down on superfluous military bases? Santorum: We need superfluous military bases.

GOTCHA QUESTION FOR PAWLENTY: WHO IS BETTER, BIDEN OR PALIN, GO. “Biden has been wrong about everything.” Except on how to be the world’s best grandpa, right?

We’ve got one last minute for state pandering! Romney: “People in New Hampshire love the future.” Pawlenty scrambles onto the Bruins bandwagon. Minnesota’s team (The Mighty Ducks?) must be crushed.

Oh, Knifecrime Island, you never disappoint: “Hospital staff have been inundated with bruised and boozy women from Take That concerts. Tens of thousands of ladies in their 30s and 40s attended the pop band’s series of shows at the City of Manchester stadium, ending on Sunday. And such was the level of drinking — and falling over — it led to a spike in numbers attending the A&E; department at Manchester Royal Infirmary (MRI)…. By the end of the concert, thousands of legless ladies were unleashed on to the streets of Manchester.”

by Nate Hopper

• Israel, according to Mitt Romney

• Palestine, according to Walter Russell Mead at The American Interest

• Rev. Jeremiah Wright, according to Rev. Jeremiah Wright

• Christianity, according to Tara Wall, deputy editor at The Washington Times

• Hosni Mubarak, according to Foreign Policy’s Shadow Blog, pretty much any FOX guest

• America, according to Michelle Malkin and Sophie B. Hawkins

• Chris Rock, according to Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy’s Passport blog*

• Democrats, according to Chris Stirewalt at FOX News

• Tax evaders, according to Foreign Policy’s Shadow Blog

• Fixed exchange rates, according to Daniel Drezner at Foreign Policy

• Contraception, according to Michelle Malkin

• Our allies in and around Eastern Europe, according to a writer at The American Thinker

• No one, according to at Samuel Charap at Foreign Policy

• His “fiscal commissioners,” according to Stephen Stromberg at The Washington Post

• His grandmother, according to Ann Coulter, Charles Krauthammer and and others

• Arizona, according to Greg Gutfeld at FOX

• Joe Biden, according to an editor at The Daily Telegraph

• 2010 lame duck Congress, according to a cartoonist for The Akron Beacon-Journal

• Shirley Sherrod, according to a cartoonist for The State Journal-Register

• Gov. David Paterson, according to Dan Collins at The Huffington Post

• His entire church, according to Michelle Malkin

• Prof. Henry Louis Gates, according to Rush Limbaugh

• Rosa Parks, according to Pat Buchanan

• The financial sector, according to Citigroup Chief Executive Vikram Pandit, speaking on Charlie Rose

• The LGBT community, according to historian Timothy McCarthy in The New York Times

• His family, according to Politico’s Roger Simon

* Edited to add: Actually, nope, not Chris Rock. Keating was only using that as a mock example in his argument.

Nate Hopper is a summer Awl reporter.

Photo by David Boyle.

by A Lesbian Blogger

From time to time, the Awl offers its space to members of the community with an interesting viewpoint on current events. Today we hear from a lesbian blogger who wants you to know what her experiences are like.

You know what I really like? Cats, knitting, my blog and the Indigo Girls. But that’s not all there is to being a lesbian, which I am. In a lot of ways, we’re just like everyone else. Let me tell you a little bit about my day! It’s probably not too dissimilar to yours. Except I lick more vaginas. A lot more.

I wake up in the morning next to whoever’s vagina I licked last night. Then I turn on NPR and make us a pot of tea and some delicious organic oatmeal. (Lesbians, like me, love organic oatmeal.) I read the New York Times and get ready for my day working at the feminist bookstore. If there is time before I go, I lick a vagina. I also enjoy having my own vagina licked. All lesbians do!

After a hard day battling against Amazon.com and the rest of the patriarchy, I am ready for some action: sports action! I hop on my bike and head over to the softball field, where I play softball with my lesbian softball team. We’re all lesbians! There is always a fight over who is going to be the catcher, but that quickly turns into a hot lesbian free-for-all orgy. Oh, the vagina licking that goes on! Then we play a couple of innings.

When the game is over and we’re ready to unwind, we all go to the neighborhood lesbian bar. It’s not too different from a regular bar, except it is full of hot, hot lesbians, all of whom just can’t wait to find the perfect vagina to take home and lick. It gets a little boisterous, but when you’re around a bunch of your fellow lesbians (I am a lesbian), you can’t help but get caught up in “the scene,” what with its sisterhood and togetherness and the possibility of vagina-lickery that fills the air like sweet perfume.

After I’ve picked out the perfect vagina (or group of perfect vaginas) we go back to my place, and then the vagina licking gets started in earnest. Can you imagine how hot it is, with all those sexy lesbians like myself giving in to their deepest desires, writhing around in a tangled mass of breasts and sweat? And vaginas? I’m perspiring a little just thinking about it. I bet you can just picture all the vaginas being licked. Pretty sexy, right?

Once all the vaginas have been licked and licked again, we cuddle up in front of the TV and watch an episode of “The L Word.” I quickly update my blog, being sure to recount all the vaginas I’ve licked that day, and then we drift off to sleep, sated by the vagina licking and excited for the vagina licking to come. When we sleep, we dream of vaginas. Specifically, licking them. And that’s what it’s like to be a lesbian.

A Lesbian Blogger is totally not some 43-year-old heterosexual guy.

Photo by Jorg, from Flickr.

by Allison Benedikt

It starts at a very young age. The summer after third grade, my parents sent me to Jewish sleepaway camp. I was deeply homesick at first and cried a lot in my bunk bed, but by the end of the month I didn’t want to leave. So I went back, summer after summer — boarding the plane with a few other Jewish kids from my hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, and flying to Appleton, Wisconsin, with a stop-over at O’Hare, where a volunteer from Hadassah would meet us at the gate and try to keep us from the moo shu pork at Wok-N-Roll.

Those summers blur together, but each day begins and ends at the flagpole, where we raise and lower two flags: the American and the Israeli. We make blue and white lanyard bracelets, carve Israel out of ice cream, and sing “Hatikvah.” Because it’s all Jews, I’m considered cute. The second summer, a boy (Avi, short, red-hair) asks me out (“Will you go with me?” “Go where?”) and I get my first kiss. Other kids from home also go to Jewish camp, but mine is different. It is, I learn, part of a Zionist youth movement. I am in a movement! Weird names like Jabotinsky and Herzl float through the air. I don’t have to know particulars to realize that these guys are (a) important, and (b) connected to me, and I to them.

There are real live Israelis at camp every summer. They have awesome names like Michal and Eyal and are rock stars with their rolling Rs and Israeli scout uniforms. They make me nervous. There’s Israeli dancing and Israeli singing and on movie night, we watch Raid on Entebbe. The counselors talk to us about “tikkun olam,” which roughly translates to “repairing the world” — this is something that Jews do very well because we are very good people.

Every so often we all pile into an empty cabin and are asked to stand under whichever sign taped to the wall best represents our idea of Zionism. Things like: “giving money to Israel,” “observing Jewish customs,” “moving to Israel.” The older I get, the cooler it becomes to stand under the “moving to Israel” sign. So I do. Our counselors tell us that they plan to spend a year in Israel after high school and this seems like something I might want to do too. Whatever “the diaspora” is, it does not sound good.

Summer ends, I go back home, I feel different. I stay up late talking to my camp friends on the phone. They’re in Lexington and Chicago and South Bend and Okemos, Michigan. Their lives are more Jewish than mine. They keep kosher — some have never even been to McDonald’s! This would be, in Youngstown, exotic. Tuesdays and Thursdays after regular school comes Hebrew School, which I dread like everyone else. We learn things that don’t apply to me — The Red Sea? The Burning Bush? — or are vague. A teacher hands out crayons and construction paper and ask us to draw a picture of God. I draw a big abstract swirl and then another. Ryan Kramer draws Kermit the Frog with a top hat. At 13, I have a Bat Mitzvah with an “SNL”-themed after party. That same year I visit my camp friends in Chicago and smoke my first cigarette and talk about joining the Israeli army. I don’t know about Palestinians. No one told me.

The summer before high school, I age out of my safe little midwestern camp and into the movement’s senior camp. It’s in upstate New York and brings together kids from all over the country. This is my first real brush with East Coast Jews. I am no longer considered cute, and those that are remark on my “Ohio shoes” and my flat accent. I don’t have Umbros; they do. And they’ve all already been to Israel! They know how to speak Hebrew! There are things called “day schools” in New York — this is the first I’ve heard about Solomon Schechter — and they all went to them. I am a full-on loser for a week, but then Shayna, also from Youngstown, makes it known that she brought Marlboro Lights, and the tide turns in our favor.

Between summers, I start to get involved in the youth group affiliated with camp. I run for office and win! I am Treasurer! I go to national conventions, where there are debates late into the night over whether “aliyah” (immigration to Israel) should be the goal of our “peer-led” youth movement, or a goal. I start to know people who are actually making aliyah — not just spending a year in Israel, but becoming Israeli citizens, and serving in the IDF.

The summer after 11th grade, I go on a six-week teen tour to Israel. It’s with all of my camp friends, and sponsored by the movement. It is amazing. I’m nervous when we take off, but it’s pretty cool how everyone on this plane is Jewish, like family. The last few rows are full of black-hatters, and we sneak back there to smoke — something that’s not-really-but-sort-of still allowed on El Al at the time. When we land in Tel Aviv, the flight crew plays Hatikvah and everyone claps. When we deplane, I kiss the ground.

Okay — there are soldiers everywhere and they are so handsome! We take a bus to Jerusalem — to a youth hostel in the neighborhood of Mount Scopus, specifically, which looks out over all of Jerusalem. Mount Scopus was a buffer zone after Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, but since the Six Day War in ’67, it’s been part of Jerusalem proper. These are details I don’t really know much about. There are Arab villages nearby, in the valley below, but I don’t know much about that either. What I do know is that Hebrew University is right across the street and Hadassah Hospital is down the block — two world-class institutions! Hadassah Hospital even treats Arabs.

Some stuff goes down that summer — a bombing? I can’t remember — and our counselors tell us to stay off the buses. Weird that my parents are cool with me being here. But I always feel safe. Everyone says that about Israel and it’s so true: You always feel safe. We hike in the Golan (beautiful), float in the Dead Sea (a little touristy), light candles at Yad Vashem, raft on the Jordan River, ride a camel, tour all the holy sites (except the Christian and Muslim ones) and do some serious bonding with each other and “the land.” We visit a kibbutz — finally! And I eat a lot of dairy — it just tastes better here. We go to Haifa and Eilat and Sderot, right near the Gaza Strip, whatever that is. I spend one weekend with a real Israeli family, and it is awkward — surprising, because we are all Jewish. I learn how to say “what the hell?” in Hebrew (ma pitom?) and say it a lot because it’s really funny. I become a huge David Broza fan and start wearing flowy pants with elastic waistbands that I buy from a vendor on Ben Yehuda Street.

Halfway through the summer is Special Interest Week, when we get to choose an elective, like water sports on the Kinneret or arts or hiking or the army. There’s really no question, and soon enough I’m wearing fatigues and standing in formation with all my best friends. I get to be commander for a day — this is the best summer of my life — and learn to shoot an M16. It jams into my shoulder and burns when I get off a round. I am a good shot.

Time flies and soon I’m packing up my paper target and everything else accumulated that summer, showering one last time in the flip-flops I bought at the shuk (market), putting on my IDF t-shirt, marveling over El Al’s security, and boarding the flight home. Or “home.” Everyone is sobbing. I listen to David Broza on my Walkman until I finally fall asleep on the plane.

The adjustment back to America is not easy. No one in Ohio understands me. Am I an American Jew or a Jewish American? If, hypothetically, America and Israel were to go to war, who would I fight for? I ask these questions.

It’s senior year. I drink a lot and break curfew with all the people who don’t understand me. We smoke weed in my Chevy Eurosport wagon on the way to the Tom Petty concert and my best friend is crowned Prom Queen. I visit my camp friends in New York — we share a massive frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity and they all talk about deferring college for a year to go to Israel. I decide to head to Ann Arbor in the fall instead. I very clearly remember that I’m not sure why.

The summer before college I return to the camp of my youth, in Wisconsin, as a counselor. I get the sense that it’s not a good idea to tell the campers that I’m not going to Israel in the fall, or that, though I do expect to make aliyah eventually, I’m not 100% sure. It’s a great summer. I am a Jewish leader! I’m still not really sure who Jabotinsky is, but the important thing is that the kids don’t know that I don’t know. It seems a little late for me to ask a friend.

College: I opt to live in the “Jewish dorm,” Markley Hall. I have trouble making friends. I gain a lot of weight. In November, Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated and I am sick not to be there. I talk to my friends on the phone long-distance and feel very removed. I don’t fit in anywhere. I hate college. I should have gone to Israel.

Freshman year happens. Sophomore year happens. Finally, my chance: I return to Mount Scopus, this time to attend Hebrew University for my junior year abroad. I make friends immediately, get a boyfriend, Craig, and feel like myself again. Early on, there’s a bombing in the shuk. The next week my friends and I go as a group to that same shuk — we will not be cowed. There are no other major attacks that year, at least as far I know. I don’t read the newspaper or watch the news while there, but Craig’s parents awesomely ship the “Seinfeld” series finale to him. We all chip in to rent a hotel room for the Oscars. My older sister comes to visit and looks up a friend from college who recently moved to Tel Aviv. I get the sense that they are more than friends.

I turn 21 in Jerusalem and must at this point know about the occupation, but who can say, really? I’m “not political.” But I have picked up the bullet points: In 1948, the Palestinians chose to leave Israel and now they want it back. They were offered part of the land and turned it down. Their Arab brothers in Jordan and Egypt won’t take them. They don’t “help their own” like we do. Israel has been at war for its entire existence, and the price of losing that war is another Holocaust. “Haven” is the word my parents always use. The world hates the Jews. We need a “haven” — and America isn’t it.

I rent a car with friends for a weekend up north, and know that there are certain places we shouldn’t drive. We take a trip to the Sinai and play cards with the really cool Arab hostel workers who give us drugs, and our guide for the trek up Mt. Sinai is very friendly, so we tip him well. I go to Jordan for a weekend with another girl from school, meet two sketchy Israeli guys at a café, and wisely decide to go camping with them in some remote patch of desert that night. If they are Israeli, they must be safe. I spend a couple of weekends with old friends from camp who are now serving in the IDF. I feel this weird sadness/emptiness/nausea in my stomach whenever I am with them. They look like they are playing dress-up in their uniforms. I should feel proud, but I don’t.

I go back to Ann Arbor. Senior year. I work at Zingerman’s, its own kind of cult, and fall for a coworker who spells his name not Marc but Mark. All of a sudden, I’m dating a non-Jew — a term he thinks is really funny. As if the world is divided like that! (It isn’t?) My parents aren’t too happy about Mark-with-a-K. “If you don’t date them, you won’t marry them,” they always said. I knew at least one couple who got divorced “because the wife wasn’t Jewish.” I didn’t want to get divorced.

Mark says something mean about Israel and I am confused. Or he is. He must be. I better find out. But I don’t, really. Or I do, but just a little. I find out just enough to know that I don’t want to know more. I graduate with my Jewish identity intact!

That summer, something happens. I start lying to my parents. I know how this sounds — whoa, lying! — but really, I had always aimed to please. I tell my parents I’m headed to Columbus to visit Shayna when I’m really headed to Ann Arbor to visit Mark. I take an LSAT class but in my gut know that I’m not going to law school. I tell my sister that when I move to New York in the fall, I’m going to “do my own thing.” I’m not going to live on the Upper West Side like she does or go to B’nai Jeshurun on Friday nights. I read about dance parties in New York magazine and think this might be something I’d like to do instead. I start berating my parents for the Jewish community work they’ve been doing all their adult lives. Why the fuck are we helping our own? We don’t need any help! We’re rich! I am so right.

New York. I rent a cheap place in Brooklyn with a Canadian friend from Hebrew U. I get a job as a paralegal, eventually split with Mark, and go on some awkward blind dates with nebbishy Jews and fratty Jews but only Jews. My sister decides to move to Jerusalem. I am proud. I take a car with her to the airport, cry hysterically when she gets on the plane, and then go to the ATM to take out money for my cab ride home. The ATM must be broken: It won’t give me any money! Some really cute guy sees me breaking down at the cash machine, we start talking, and he offers to share a car with me back to Brooklyn, his treat. His name is Josh Mensch, so, yeah — I’m safe. I eventually go on a few dates with this Josh Mensch character, who it turns out is not a member of the tribe. What are the odds?! He also has some pretty funny ideas about Israel and is in a band. Swoon. It doesn’t last, but it is starting to seem like I have a type and that type is not Zionist.

I do well on my LSATs but have not actually applied to law school, so clearly I am not becoming a lawyer. Through sheer force of will and also nepotism, I get a magazine job. I start flirting with John, one of the few staffers who isn’t Jewish (after flirting with another of the few). He flirts back! My sister visits New York and I blow off a Shabbat dinner in her honor and instead get drinks with John. This time it lasts.

John fills my head with allllllllllllll kinds of bullshit. Stuff about the Israelis being occupiers, about Israel not being a real democracy, about the dangers of ethnic nationalism — a term I really hadn’t heard applied to Israel before. (Okay, fine, I hadn’t heard it at all.) My parents worry that I’m being brainwashed. We get in huge fights on the same topic over and over again and have terribly awkward dinners where John insists on bringing up Israel and pissing off my Mom. I act as moderator and it is the worst. John buys every book about Israel that’s ever been published, and then reads them all so he can win any argument with my family. What he doesn’t realize is that my parents don’t do facts on this issue. They do feelings. Israel is who they are. Gradually, and then also all of a sudden, it’s no longer who I am — and I am angry.

John and I move to Chicago; my sister moves from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv and marries that “friend” who she visited during my junior year abroad. She becomes an Israeli citizen. I stop believing anything my parents or Abe Foxman say about Israel. John and I get engaged. I change my home page from the New York Times to Haaretz, whose columnists seem to agree more with my Jew-hating fiancé than with my community-leading parents. John and I get married. We are now a united front against the organized Jewish community, and I find myself saying and thinking things that I’m not even sure I believe because I’m not really sure what I believe. Still, my sister lives in this place I’m railing against. I convince John that we should visit her. He’s not happy about it, but agrees to go. A week before our trip, the Israeli military assassinates Ahmed Yassin, a founder of Hamas. Israel is on high alert. We read that Jerusalem’s mayor is telling citizens to carry their guns on them at all times. John is freaked out, but I am sure that once we get there and he sees what it’s really like, he’ll be fine.

It is a horrible visit. At JFK, Israeli security asks him more questions than they ask me. I squirm and stammer something about it being their job. Once in Tel Aviv, John confronts my sister and her husband on their “morally bankrupt decision” to live in Israel. I spend the whole week trying to explain him to her and her to him, even though they mostly agree. (She’s become Israeli, which is a lot different from being an American Jew.) He thinks the Bauhaus architecture is ugly (“this city looks like a war zone”) and is unimpressed by the Wailing Wall (“it’s small”), but at least concedes that the food is delicious and the women are hot. He’s legitimately scared of an attack, which seems absurd to me, even though we walk by a bombed-out disco only a few minutes from my sister’s apartment. We take a trip to the West Bank and pass through a checkpoint manned by Israeli soldiers who — so friendly! — tell us they are from Jersey. I feel sick. This is a different Israel than I remember. Or I am different? The trip finally ends and wow it is good to be home.

My sister has a baby in 2005. I go visit, this time without John, and… have a lot fun. The Mediterranean is beautiful — I had forgotten that. I run on the beach, eat good food, hang out in cafes and buy pretty jewelry. My sister has a really great life here. I love being an aunt. I am able to completely isolate all of my anger, lock it away, forget about those other people in those other territories. It’s a relief to see her and feel this way: being in Israel is like hanging out with a long-lost friend and finding that you still have that bond.

In 2006, bad shit goes down in Lebanon. I am paying attention this time. I watch the news in horror and talk to my Mom on the phone every day, whose opinions vacillate wildly depending on who she is speaking with or how attacked she feels by the anchors on TV.

My sister and I fall into a safe pattern of barely talking about anything political. John and I move back to New York. She has another baby. I get pregnant, and this seems to bring us even closer than we were before. I wish she’d move back. I miss her.

Obama runs for president. I canvass for him in Baltimore and my Mom does the same in Youngstown. My sister talks about how Israeli leaders need an American president to be tough on them for anything to change. And what Israelis call “the situation” continues to devolve.

My sister lives a full and happy life in Tel Aviv. She has two awesome kids who will both serve in the Israeli Army one day. I love them all very much. All of us kids have had an impact on my mother — as has Jeffrey Goldberg. Mom turns out to be open-minded. She thinks she never got the full story either, and is now tortured over Israel, a torture that seems to occupy 80% of her brain. She is basically alone among her friends, most of them reflexively “pro”-Israel, one-issue voters who try to make her feel stupid when she is not. My father is still a hawk. I don’t care as much as either of them, but I do still care — and not just because it’s a Major World Issue, and not just because my sister lives there.

John and I have two kids of our own and are raising them as Jews. Most of my Jewish friends are disgusted with Israel. It seems my trajectory is not at all unique. My best memories from childhood are from camp, and I will never, ever send my kids there.

Allison Benedikt is the film editor of the Village Voice.

Photos by, in order: Alex, Sandra Cohen-Rose and Colin Rose, Susan Hartline, Adam Jones, Robert.

Here we can note the passing of Carl Gardner, the last surviving member of the Coasters, and welcome the Awl’s summer reporting team with one great song. Gardner was 83. Which might be older than all our new friends put together.

Actor Sean Bean, out having a drink with “a topless model” (who was, presumably, clothed at the time) this weekend in London, was punched and stabbed with what is believed to be broken glass by an unknown assailant who made “lewd” comments about the model. In the course of defending her honor, Bean sustained injuries to his arm and face. “Despite his wounds, Bean refused medical attention and opted not to go to a hospital. Instead, the actor kindly accepted a first aid kit from the bar staff, then ordered another drink.” [Related: Stormy Monday is a really underrated movie. Even Sting is good in it. Sting!]

“Basketball star Dirk Nowitzki has accomplished what no other German athlete has ever been able to: He is now a bona fide American hero. And he has made it popular to love a German.”

by Bethlehem Shoals

I can’t tell if the Internet is a never-ending job, an inescapable workplace, or both. I suppose my job is “writing” (I try to stay a notch above “warrior of content”) but it still feels weird to introduce myself as “a writer.” In my ears this always sounds like I’ve been revising a historical novel about my great-uncle’s flight from a Cossack bandit gang in the latter part of the Crimean war, complete with an appendix explaining several varieties of cannon.

For pretty much all my waking hours, I sit in front of a laptop, juggling windows and frantically typing as the world goes white behind me. Multi-tasking was a lie, put on this earth to expire alongside stock options and supervisors who care. It’s a word that splits the difference between several planes of distraction while providing satisfying outcomes for none. I know this, and yet my idea of work is tackling five to ten things at once. Chats, email exchanges, writing, Tumblring and Twittering make me whole, or at least create the illusion of meaningful activity. I suppose I’m worried about getting any one thing too right, or too wrong. But there’s also the sense that inhabiting the web in this way, or constructing this kind of web environment, is productive, even necessary.

In 2006, Dave Chappelle’s “If The Internet Was A Real Place” questioned our passive acceptance of pop-up ads and unwanted inbox invasion. Things have since improved — sort of. The miserable state of publishing, Internet and otherwise, has brought back the pop-up and rollover like an advancing zombie army. More importantly, even if the Internet experience has been streamlined — through smarter and less unruly sites, browsers, and gadgets, as well as targeted fun-fests like Instapaper — we still choose density, accomplished now through a clutter of our own making. Chappelle’s conceit has been turned inside out, several times over. The web isn’t a fantasy land, it’s where our daily lives unfold. It is a real place. It hasn’t invaded our lives with its internet-ness; at any given moment, we’re the ones who brings ourselves willingly to it. And while in his sketch, each stranger baldly announces his intentions, today’s characters aren’t only harder and harder to tell apart — they’re now often fragments of our own selves.

This splintering leads to a disorder that, in super-scientific fashion, we will call “Personality Seepage.” Personality seepage is the consequence of that nether-state, when we put too much of ourselves online at once. Windows, boxes, and browsers look so much alike, and sit so close to each other on our laptop screens, is it any wonder that there is some communication — or seepage — between boxes?

Last Thursday, I caught myself with five active chat windows open; one email just sent and two more saved as drafts; a Google doc hovering; Twitter and Tumblr humming along; and, always impassive in the background, that Microsoft Word document called “Book Proposal.” A real-life friend I’ve known for years wanted confirmation, once and for all, that Delonte West had not slept with LeBron James’s mom last spring. A former coworker and I were exchanging photos of “wheelhouses,” which I had always thought was much more like a “woodshed.” I was also trembling over a discussion of the bizness with a mentor-like figure who intimidates the hell out of me; gossiping and planning big things with an online confidant, one of those folks whose chat window stays active all day; and engaged in the latest round of ice-breaking with a new web pal. These conversations sat in Gmail, all in a row, flashing and demanding my attention in fits and starts.

With each of these people, I was sharing a different part of myself, or at least adopting a slightly different persona. The written word, with no face behind it, is targeted like that. I have no idea what my brain activity looked like at the moment, but there’s just no way I could be that many different people at once.

At least several times a day, I find myself misplacing tone and intention. There are supposed to be clear boundaries here, and yet as different as the interactions are, the relative homogeneity of the interface is what dominates. If I lose focus, the human behind the chat window, or looming over the email-in-progress, drifts away. “I have long admired your publication” becomes “I love the stuff you guys are doing”; I use capitalization, and labor over word choice, in a chat about people who are dicks. I find myself replacing the stately italics with all-caps in a for-pay piece of writing. Exclamation points and emoticons crop up where there’s no guarantee the audience will get the irony behind them. We’ve all had the experience of typing in the wrong window; instead of mechanical errors, though, these are instances of bringing the wrong person to the window. It’s not just a question of voice, or mannerisms. There’s the relationship I project onto the conversation, and the part of me that’s implicated in it. Sometimes it’s as simple as business versus casual — although, I would argue that, as a result of Personality Seepage, these lines are becoming increasingly blurred, even in the abstract. More often, it’s about what side of personality I’m stressing, or concealing. I can be incredibly shy and polite, or a vindictive egomaniac. Same goes for over-serious and silly. We know who we are, maybe, but others rarely get the whole picture — or at least not the full range. The web aggravates this fragmentation.

The cure is simple enough: Close windows, limit contact, take deep breathes and force myself to remember who’s behind the screen, figuratively speaking. But the real irony here might be that we don’t want to cure ourselves of Personality Seepage. If enough of ourselves is up on the screen at once, we feel whole, even real. It renforces the belief (a necessary one for some of us) that bringing our lives to the web doesn’t mean draining them (or us) of anything, well, human. It’s almost like we’re reconstructing ourselves, making sure we don’t ever end up too limited, replicating strands of our psycho-social DNA in a thousand boxes. The more time we waste online, and the more grief it causes for us, the closer we come to making the computer reflect — rather than refract — the person sitting behind it.

Bethlehem Shoals is a founding member of FreeDarko.com. Pay attention to his book and FD’s art emporium.

Photo by Shannon Kringen.

If you believe Wikipedia, on this day in 1789 the Rev. Elijah Craig first produced “whiskey distilled from maize… It is named Bourbon because Rev Craig lived in Bourbon County, Kentucky.” There are a couple of historical flaws with that proposition, but I will be damned if I’m going to get nitpicky on a subject of this magnitude. No, what I’m going to get is drunk. Drunk on bourbon! Happy Bourbon Day, one and all. If you were planning on getting me a gift, nothing says “Bourbon Day” like bourbon.

Photo by Seth Anderson, from Flickr.