When the aspirin drops, a world is created that men cannot control. "It" is a freedom that the creator of the universe, working through women, brought fully into manifestation during the 1960s; and "it" seems now, at this late date, to be driving some Republican men crazy.
They've renewed their efforts to use the Bible to control "it," and the church. Or they want to get the government to stop hindering the church from trying to control "it." Specifically, they want to stop the government from supplying contraceptives. "It" is hard enough to control when women have to pay for contraceptives. What will happen when women get freedom for free?
More than obvious was the fact that President Obama, with his darn Obamacare, had no intention of helping men control "it." Last week, Republican Presidential candidate Rick Santorum's big money backer, Forester Friess, told a corny joke: "Back in my days," he said, "they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees." That controlled "it." At least that kept "it" repressed.
A lot of people were outraged at Friess. I wasn't. Because of where I went to college, I got on an email list of old, well-to-do, white guys (Republican and Democrats) who entertained each other by sharing old-white-guy jokes, mostly about controlling "it."
"Here's one that should give you a chuckle," one of them once wrote: "A husband came home and his wife was all sexed up (that's the way they talk) . . . She was all sexed up and panting: 'Tie me up! Tie me up and do anything you wish.' The husband tied her up and went golfing." That joke showed how easy they wished "it" was to control.
In their fantasies all you need is aspirin or rope and you can continue suppression of the power of women, which men have been struggling with some success to control from before Biblical times up to the 1960s. "That's when the cat got out of the bag," said the punch line to another of their jokes.
I got a double bang out of the jokes that came through email about twice a month. I laughed with the guys but I also laughed at the guy's efforts to hold back evolution. When Obama got elected in 2008, the emailed jokes stopped. I think if Hilary Clinton had gotten elected they would have stopped even more abruptly. Something wasn't funny any more.
It was always easier for me, a black man, to find amusement in how much the black revolution had rocked the world of many old guys like these. This last week I got a sharper view of how the sexual revolution rocked their world. After all these decades Republican white guys were so disturbed that they called into session the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to hold hearings on "it."
They didn't let any women testify. They had a little black man sitting down there on the end of the row of those called to testify, but they didn't let him testify to all that much. This was their show of force. They talked about Obamacare's infringement on the freedom of religious institutions to infringe on the freedom of women to express "it."
Apparently they placed part of the blame squarely on "it" for the way society was falling into shambles ––three-quarters of African-American children born out of wedlock; half of Latinos; a quarter of whites-in a culture that has been over sexualized. "Pornography and loose morals are everywhere," I could say on their behalf, while thinking: you guys got your own little hidden perversions.
And those statistics on births out of wedlock do not prove that society was better off when you guys were in charge, I thought as I watched the hearings. I remembered one of their jokes about saving the world by closing Pandora's box.
I knew they felt they had made enough concessions to "it." Some of their wives of 40 to 50 years had been "permitted" to have careers after the wives had read that Betty Friedan book, what was it, The Feminine Mystique. When was it, back in the early 1960s, telling them how unfortunate they were to have nice homes, with great lives without having to get out and work. I could hear their arguments in my mind.
"What do they (women) want," I could ask on behalf of the guys on the email list and members of the governmental oversight committee? "With open hearts you had helped your grown children (male and female equally) to bridged between the moral universe you lived in and one you don't agree with," I parodied.
"Daddy has given good advice and contacts. Or the children's careers were facilitated by ways of thinking the children inherited from being brought up in a culture filled with father-knows-best home," I could say, believing in my heart that these guys were not bad people. I've known so many of them from back in college in the late 50s. They told "colored" jokes and I told jokes about repression of the wonderful but mysterious power of nature, envisioning even then the eventual triumph of "it."
Most of them attend church regularly. On Forester Friess website there are many signs of the goodness in his heart. He gives to charities providing much needed aid to children "who have suffered the loss of a loved one."
Another charity helps urban teenagers prepare for better opportunities. One says its mission is to "secure justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression. . . .in Asia, Africa and Latin America."
At the site are more than 2 dozen organizations with noble mission statements to which Friess gives money, including one co-founded by actor Matt Damon, to bring safe drinking water to people in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Haiti, Honduras, Kenya and Uganda. (Damon's name is notable because he is as far left as Rick Santorum is far right.)
Back in the 50s, like children of colonial overlords and home office civil servants these guys did not have to acknowledge the brutality taking place out in "the territories." While boys were being boys down at the frat house, African Americans lived under the constant fear of racist violence. Children as young as eight worked in coal mines. Colonial armies were vicious in their suppression of three quarters of the earth's population.
Not counting female "victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression," women in their own social classes lived with severely limited horizons and options.. Hacks performed abortions in basement apartments using coat hangers.
In their nostalgia no memories of evil exists because it didn't really exist all that close to the bubble they lived in during the 50s. And so now they found an ambitious, young acolyte in Rick Santorum to champion the return to a life that never existed, as they recall it now to him.
Rick, instilled with an alter boy's faith, seems convinced Obama's policies will advance the power of "it" to change the world into something the guys cannot control. Judging from Santorum's statements, he and the people whose cause he champions, are getting desperate, as if they know they have only until this November's Presidential election to stop "it," or the new world might begin to recover from the shambles that they themselves made; and "it" will be free and their privileged position will fade forever. And aspirin will be used primarily to treat headaches and heart attacks.
George Davis is professor emeritus at Rutgers University and the creator of the interactive, world-sourced, digital series, Barack Obama, America and the World.
