After waking up at 4 am to catch a 7 am flight back to LA, I braved a dark and frigid Vancouver morning
Once through security and my full body scan, (you can't be too careful when it comes to us pasty, gray-haired fifty-something security threats), I did what we all do at the airport. I hurried up and waited. That gave me a chance to get all caught up on the breaking news in the US (which I had been blissfully unaware of for the past three days), thanks to a giant TV screen every three feet.
That's when I saw it.
The Senate, led by the majority leader Mitch McConnell had shushed Elizabeth Warren!
Fueled by a profound lack of sleep, too much airport coffee, and the bubbling up of red-hot rage, I blinked a couple of times in disbelief and I may have yelled back at the TV, "Oh, now you've done it! You don't EVER shush a woman!"
Now remember, I'm in Canada. No crowd gathered. No one shouted their agreement because they're too polite to shout at a TV in an otherwise silent terminal, or maybe because it was before five in the morning and the only ones who heard it were a janitor cleaning the carpet...and a potted plant.
Nevertheless, you guys! Seriously?
EVERY man I know knows that if he wants to live to see his next birthday--you don't tell a woman she is overreacting -- and you never try to shush her--let alone in public. Not EVER! Most especially Senator Elizabeth Warren.
"What is wrong with you? Fools!" I may have jeered under my breath but still loud enough for the carpet cleaner to hear it over his machine and jerk his head in my direction. Soon there were hand gestures and some fist waving. "Don't cite some archaic rule and twist it into a mandate fitting your agenda. Jesus Christ on a cracker! Do you not have wives? Daughters? Someone whom you love who has a vagina and was born in the 20th century?"
"I KNOW you don't get away with this at home!"
In reality, they shushed two women when they forbid her to speak. She was reading a letter penned by Coretta Scott King back in the 1980's in which she was criticizing Jeff Sessions who was then a nominee to become a federal judge.
No big deal. Just the widow of civil-rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
It seemed apropos to read it aloud seeing that now he's nominated to become the Attorney General. Right? I mean are we so far through the looking glass...? Let's see...too racially biased to be a judge...perhaps not fit to...you get the picture.
Sadly, when they do this they are attempting to shush us all.
Oh, this gets my hackles up. This boils my blood. Big Time.
Luckily for the early morning crowd gathering at gate 82, I was obligated to hurl through the air at five hundred miles per hour in a metal tube for the next three hours. It gave me a chance to cool off. I hadn't planned on writing anything but I have two plus hours up here with no internet and I've finished my People magazine-so here goes.
Here is me cooled off:
Dear members of the House and Senate,
If you think you can shush us women into submission--you have another thing coming, you silly, silly men. Big mistake.
Weren't our marches on Washington, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, London, Paris, Rome to name a few...just adorable? With our knitted caps and cardboard signs? Aren't our phone campaigns that fill your inboxes to capacity just darling?
You ain't seen nothing yet. You have emboldened us. Be prepared. You will hear our voices in every way imaginable.
You may have won this battle--but you will not win the war.
Who's with me?
*Written in the sky somewhere over the Great Northwest.