Axwell, "I Found U"

This past weekend I marched in NYC's GLBT Pride parade. There are many reasons for these events, but my favorite is simple: the reminder that what matters is not who you love; it's that you love.

I had the pleasure of riding on a float for the first time - "I'm on a float!" - and enjoyed hearing the blaring dance music coming from the bear-ish float in front of ours. One song that recurred was a club hit from two summers ago, Axwell's "I Found U," whose video serves as a great reminder that we find ourselves when we open ourselves to another, when we open ourselves to love.

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, "100 Days, 100 Nights"

News outlets all over are marking Barack Obama's 100th day in office. It's an outdated and not useful benchmark (as in, not relevant to any President since FDR), as Joe Klein of Time magazine recently observed - but even if "the idea that a President can be assessed in a mere 100 days is a journalistic conceit," it's an irresistible one.

And the 100-days thing applies to more than gauging a presidency, as Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings advised us two years ago on the title track to their wonderful album 100 Days, 100 Nights. It takes 100 days to know a man's heart, Sharon tells us: a flawed guy can fake-it-til-he-makes-it for a short while, but eventually his true colors show. "You know, a man can play the part of a saint just so long."

I've found this to be empirically true: most notably, it was at right about the 100th day of living with a certain ex-roommate that he bailed town, in a scene right out of Aimee Mann's The Forgotten Arm album. It is at around that 100th day of knowing someone that you know what kind of person he will be.

So President Obama, getting back to you - I'm glad you've moved forward with your ambitious and, yes, audacious agenda for America, not letting the wingnuts and verbal snipers distract you from the big picture of how to improve America and thus improve the world. Congrats on the progress thus far in this first mile of your long journey as our President.

Devendra Banhart, "The Other Woman"

I admit that I had never heard of Sarah Palin as recently as two weeks ago, and I'd like to think I kind of stay on top of political affairs. Her selection as John McCain's vice-presidential nominee threw me for a loop, and I initially wrote it off as crass gender politics, a means of co-opting disappointed PUMAs and Appalachians.

Clearly there's more to her than that. She's certainly an impressive person, fearless and able to spot an open door in a labyrinth; but the more I learn of her, frankly, the less I like. As a rationalist I'm dismayed that she considers creationism on a par with evolution as theories go. As a feminist I'm appalled at her refusal to countenance abortion even in cases of rape. (Obama got this one right: we can disagree on the topic of abortion, but we can agree to work together in education and policy to minimize the need for them.) As a realist I'm stunned that while disavowing abortion she simultaneously specifically slashed funds from a program designed to help overly young mothers adapt to adult life with their children. And as an American I'm saddened by the concept she holds of the country she wants to help lead.

Palin's speech last night was light on promises and heavy on invective; she stretched facts and in cases outright lied - which one might expect from any politician, but she went further. Not content to simply critique the qualifications of her opposing candidates, she saw fit to critique entire groups of people, chief among them community organizers; and what I took from her speech is that she desires not to lead America, but to lead those Americans who share her values. As a liberal, as a homosexual, as a non-Christian, I simply do not exist in Sarah Palin's America.

So here's one for you, Governor: Devendra Banhart's "The Other Woman". As someone who wants America to be for all Americans, not merely the Christofascists, I trust history will put you back where it found you.