Among the Intellectualoids/Rally of the Dolls
Labash, Matt
Rally of the Dolls by Matt Labash N 9 eath the shadowed phallus of the Washington Monument, one couldn't help but think there had to be a better way to run a revolution. The National...
...L est there be confusion, Gingrich was cast as the Great White Satan...
...stop anti-abortion violence...
...Brand-name revolutionaries," Sabina sniffed...
...This year, the only headliners NOW could get to fill those empty Reeboks were Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless—TV's long-agocanceled Cagney and Lacey, with Gless looking about forty pounds over fighting weight...
...All afternoon, the dancers rigorously followed the First Law of Activist Nudity: The less toned the muscle, the more flesh bared...
...Aging ex-congresswoman Bella Abzug was there, still an exquisite specimen with her purple, wide-brimmed hat and her stout game-hen gams...
...stop the Contract on America...
...And that's Ms...
...thus had a ringside seat for the political boilerplate...
...Denise Brown, Nicole Simpson's sister, had raised one in her honor earlier that day...
...When Toad the Wet Sprocket came on, many greasy-haired co-eds stripped down to their bras...
...So "Salt," or Cheryl James, as she's known in private life, remained bandless backstage, at the mercy of inquisitive reporters...
...171 The American Spectator June 1995 53...
...Matt Labash is a reporter for The American Spectator...
...Washington needs women fighting for their lives at least as much as we need the cherry blossoms...
...That was about all he could handle: when I asked him backstage if he was staying for Saltn-Pepa, he smiled and whispered, "No, I have to go back to New York...
...Get tough, get real tough, be fair, be real tough—and be fair . . ." before wandering away from the podium...
...Within the span of our rally, Jesse Jackson told us women were earning 69 cents on the dollar...
...But the act that really brought down the house was Caryl Towner and her chorus, the Tone-Deafs, along with their bongo ensemble...
...stop the war on poor women...
...I counted myself fortunate to be standing there at all...
...When she broke into the rally's mantra?We Won't Go Back"?I found myself agreeing with a few reporters from the Howard University student newspaper that Caryl was the whitest woman ever hatched...
...T he crowd kept trickling in across the mile-long expanse of the Mall, from the scaffolded stage in front of the Capitol Building back to the Washington Monument, where the "Clothesline Project"—a horrific Fruit of the Loom reliquary of 6,000 hanging Tshirts—bore curses and ill wishes from rape and incest victims to their abusers...
...Gingrich, if you want to be a real man, attack AFDC—Aid for Dependent Corporations...
...Patricia Ireland herself couldn't resist roasting a few stale chestnuts: "We can't just look at the damage, shrug and say `Well, Newt happens.' . . . When we hear from Newt's own mom that he thinks Hillary Clinton is a b-i-t-c-h, we know that Newt Gingrich can't stand Hillary Rodham Clinton or any woman being in total control of herself...
...Rep...
...She had been hauled in a few weeks prior, during a protest at the Capitol rotunda...
...Gone are the halcyon days of '89, when Cybill and Marlo and Whoopi policed the boulevard in crisp suffragette whites and Che Guevara khakis...
...And that was just in the Gray Panthers' section...
...Some of the milder placards read: Don't f--k with us...
...Hailing from New York, Caryl is a folk/rap hybrid of the shrillest order...
...While telling us to "get our hands in the air" during a James Brown shuffle she was attempting in her print dashiki, she cameoff like Barbara Eden doing a bad impression of Angela Davis...
...Our message is a simple one: We won't go back...
...When one journalist asked her what she thought of the Contract With America, she replied, "I'm not familiar with that...
...We have the power to send Gingrich back to private life...
...The lasses from the 700 delegations in attendance weren't here for respectful vigils against domestic violence...
...She opened with this nifty call and response: "I'm gonna say, 'Maybe I don't wanna, maybe I don't wanna, wanna, maybe I don't wanna . . .,' and then you say, `. . . F--k you.' Can you handle that...
...I wrote a little speechy that I'm going to do today," she consoled us...
...This I learned when I made the acquaintance of Rebecca Deathbush and her lovely wife, Sabina—two roly-poly young ladies in black balloon culottes and duct-taped combat boots...
...Spinderella had other business to attend...
...Joan Jett did a song called "Spinster," looking anything but in a tight vulcanized-rubber get-up with the back slit down to her nethers...
...Charles Schumer followed suit, saying, "Newt Gingrich may have had his winter, but this is our spring...
...Others went braless altogether...
...Neither had anybody else—so busy were they making it clear just how much women hated men...
...Tyne Daly later said 71 cents, and Patricia Ireland was up to 78 by the end of the afternoon—a 13-percent gainer in the space of a few hours...
...There will be a press pass for you," she continued, "but you will not be allowed to sit with the press...
...Roseanne was supposed to be here, but her resolve is in question...
...Then he seemed to lose his train of thought...
...I'm on three months probation," Ireland continued, smiling her couldn'tyou-eat-me-with-a-spoon, arrest-me-I'vebeen-naughty smile...
...And they didn't...
...There was a preponderance of halter tops, worn with a bold indifference to padded midriffs, and the whole assemblage oiling their lambda-tattooed deltoids and overdeveloped latissimi with Bain-de-Soleil...
...Jerry Nadler of New York proclaimed: "This is a contract that reduces legal penaltiesfor violence against women, it assaults their economic security, it imprisons many women in violent abusive relationships, and it penalizes women for having children...
...Eleanor Holmes Norton kicked off the festivities: "Welcome brothers and sisters...
...Matt, quite frankly, if you're covering this for the Spectator, we're not likely to welcome you into our press area," NOW communications director Diane Minor had warned me when I called to arrange press accredita52 The American Spectator June 1995 tion...
...Raucous applause...
...The National Organization for Women's April 9 Rally for Women's Lives-50,000 strong by Park Police estimates, 250,000 strong by NOW's—was billed as a "kickoff for the 1996 elections...
...It's a contract on me," Sabina said, "as a queer, as a very poor woman, as a bastardized child...
...These two emissaries from BARF (Bisexual and Radical Feminists) told me their intended purpose was to (bless them) "F--k up NOW, the same as everybody else"—and to protest the reviled Contract...
...And, seemingly above all else, stop male reporters from conservative monthlies with intent to commit unsympathetic coverage...
...If it didn't come through in verse, song, or speech, it was obvious through the "Boot Newt," "Nuke Newt," "Neuter Newt," and "Go to Hell Gingrich" inscriptions adorning the shirts and buttons of at least one-third of those present...
...Rap act Salt-n-Pepa was scheduled to perform, but Pepa and D.J...
...Rebecca wore a T-shirt depicting a ball of flame...
...She went on to explain that the purpose of my pass wasn't to gain access to anyone the working press would want to have access to, but so that rally-goers would be aware I was a "legitimate person to bother spending time talking with...
...They had the 104th Congress on the brain, and were not to be trifled with...
...At the rally, though, the NOW watchdogs, albeit husky and menacing, were sluggish and easily confused...
...It was a profoundly morose spectacle, modeled on the quilts that gay activists trundle out to commemorate their dead on AIDS awareness days...
...It's a phoenix," she explained, "which is radical feminism rising up out of the ashes of the real feminism...
...This was the centerpiece of a commitment to "stop all violence against women (physical and political...
...Indeed they could, even if they couldn't completely understand it...
...We demand bread and roses," she said...
...Rev...
...Bitch to you, Newt...
...The all-gal band Luscious Jackson sang their not-yet-widely-known "Hey Energy Sucker, I'm a goddess, not your mother...
...Gingrich, your time is coming-18 months...
...She canceled, saying she couldn't fly because she's pregnant...
...T here was nonetheless enough rock-music that afternoon to bring out the enthusiasts...
...Jesse Jackson was weaving his usual scorched-earth parallelisms and revival-tent dime-a-rhymes, impugning Gingrich's manhood and threatening him with a term limit...
...Refusing to be out-Bella'd, Rep...
...If you can afford to print T-shirts, you're not in my revolution...
...Whether or not NOW takes control of the Democratic party machinery in '96, as is their intent, it looked as if the glass ceiling was about to blow...
...I am the squarest guy up on that platform...
...None of the noise and music could quite conceal that the A-listers aren't really interested in this kind of thing anymore...
...Its hand-scrawled inscription read, "BARF—Eating Fire Every Day...
...Cut it out or we'll cut if off...
...About this time a rival gang walked by in T-shirts that read, "Lesbian Avengers—we recruit...
...I haven't heard anybody here today say that men hate women," Ireland insisted...
...Vaginas have teeth, bite for your right...
...Asked what they'd like to see the comparatively moderate NOW do, Rebecca said, "I'd like to see them push for the full repeal of abortion laws, to see all partnerships between who-the-f--kever recognized legally, children shouldn't be owned by two parents, and I'd like to see Rush Limbaugh flushed down the toilet...
...Once in the press corral, I sidled up to the cherry-haired MTV News prodigy Tabitha Soren, and for the rest of the afternoon I was golden—traveling by cover of Tabitha, who could make a stink to MTV and the world should the NOW brutes try to roust me...
...I welcome you to help us banish the winter of the Contract and bring springtime to the lives of American women...
...he bellowed...
Vol. 28 • June 1995 • No. 6
