Dancing On Their Graves, Part Two

The "Rock For Roe" show was emceed by a young lady who calls herself "Indigo," a white chick with cropped hair and a full "ethnic" style skirt, representative of which ethnicity I couldn't say.

"We stand in solidarity with the GLBT community and all indigenous peoples!' Indigo declared. "Women are intelligent and spiritual! Deal with it!"

The crowd cheered. And I'm pretty sure they weren't all drunk.

"There are many ways to be pro-choice," she went on. "You can buy a bumpersticker and put it on your car. You can buy one and put it on somebody else's car. You can write articles, you can go on the internet, you can talk to people about your own--"

There was a brief but unmistakable hestitation. Then she finished:

"--happenstance circumstances."

"Happenstance circumstances"?

I didn't think I'd be taking notes at this shindig, but when I heard that I pulled out a pad and wrote it down. I didn't want to wake up in the middle of the night thinking I'd dreamed what I just heard.

"Happenstance circumstances."

The only thing Indigo could possibly have meant was "your own abortion." But for some reason, she choked. She had to stop, and come up with an awkward and meaningless phrase.

Why? If all these girls were so proud of being in favor of abortion on demand- so proud they were throwing parties about it, for God's sake-- why couldn't this woman proclaim it? Why couldn't she say, "Talk about your own abortions. Tell the world what a great thing it was, how it changed your life, how your choice led to freedom and peace."

She couldn't do it. At their big celebration, in front of a friendly crowd, she could not them that.

Which made me hope that perhaps even she knew it was a lie.

The evening wrapped with a performance by the Shim Sham Shufflers, a trio of tap dancers in tight shorts and black fishnet stockings. Back on the East Coast they'd probably be described as zaftig. Especially the one with the particularly impressive bosom and and even more impressive tattoo spanning that cleavage.

They did a number to the theme from "Peter Gunn." Gung-ho girls, they gave it the old school try. Big smiles, big boobs, lots of spirit.

But I think The Rockettes' reputation is still safe.

Comments

  1. Amen, sister. I had a similar experience in a college ethics class. Still green to the whole debate, I asked a classmate if she was pro-life or pro-abortion. She blanched, and I thought she'd tell me she was pro-life. "I'm pro-CHOICE", she said. "We don't say, pro-ABORTION."
    So, if abortion is so great, why is the very word trerated like a swear word?

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  2. I wonder if the pro-choicers'll ever have a play parallel to the "V-monologues" that will attempt to overcome such circumlocutions.

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  3. In that case it's funny how consistently the "best-fit terminology" for proabortion types is a weaselly evasion.

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  4. Much like the ubiquitous Nazi terminology of "units". Much easier to say that than "Jewish humans to be incinerated." Of course, as Solzehnitsyn (& Orwell & Percy) pointed out, when anyone starts monkeying with language, watch out! Much to be pitied, but not far different from the obliviously ironic Carleton College "Happy Birthday, Roe" party. Now there's a shindig.

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