Brigits_Flame August Entry 02 - Brave and Crazy

[kenderlord]

Night falls on Honolulu: a woman in a hotel room binds her hair into a bun and smears dark paint under her eyes.  She is nearly ready.

The device at her hip buzzes.  She answers.

“Yes.”

“I’m just calling one more time, honey -” Her husband.

“Yosef!  Nothing you say will stop me from doing this.”

“I’m just saying we’re worried.  I mean, the boys and I

Comments

[astraevirgo]

Okay, so, it took me a little bit of googling to figure out who the main character was, but this CRACKS me up. Yay politics. :D

[kenderlord]

Count yourself lucky that you were initially ignorant of Orly Taitz, Kate. She's done the political discourse a world of distracting hurt.

-D

[astraevirgo]

I canvassed during the presidential campaign with walk lists that supposedly weeded out all the republicans and left me only with democrats and undecideds. I talked to quite a few birthers anyway -- but I had never bothered to find out the formal ringleader nor the actual lawsuits.

I was born in Hawaii, myself. I only have a certificate of live birth. Guess I'm not American...

[katden]

I read, I googled, I guffawed!!! I was actually already giggling at the image of Biden wielding a sword...
So. Who's Glenn and Michelle?

I enjoyed this even without knowing what a birther was.
Good writing sir.

[kenderlord]

Glenn is Glenn Beck of Fox News fame, and Michelle is Michelle Malkin, a conservative blogger whom I don't, um, particularly care for. I tried to be nice, though. She barely gets two sentences, anyhow.

-D

[katden]

I had my suspicions.
;)

[purpleoctopi]

God damn, I KNEW it. Biden pretends to be a creaky old man, but you can see that glint in his eyes.

How I wish politics was dealt with like this.

Wonderful job :)

[kenderlord]

thank you!

and OMG truth is stranger than fiction.

Today, in the liberal Israeli daily Ha'aretz (hee. israeli daily), Taitz (who is Moldovan by birth but studied in Israel) said she might consider RUNNING FOR OFFICE.

Check it out; they totally buried the lede. It's the penultimate paragraph.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1108110.html

-D

[sporty502]

Hey, I am your editor for Bridgit's Flame this week

[kenderlord]

This is a rich resource!

Did you find yourself getting irritated by Taitz's depiction, or did it seem gentle enough? While I may think that the lady is distracting us (or did, for a while) as a nation, I didn't want this portrayal to be particularly acid-tongued.

"In like Flynn" is just an expression; I wish I'd had the forethought to say In Like Quinn (as in Pat Quinn, the governor of Illinois. I know! Hilarious.), but no. It doesn't mean anything specific.

I tried to make Orly less of a caricature by having her talk to her husband, having him use Hebrew terms of endearment (and punning ones, too. I don't know if you speak Hebrew, but "or sheli" means, roughly, "light of my life".).

[sporty502]

Nah, this is actually one of the most, I don't really know how to put this, unbiased, charcuteries of a person that someone probably doesn't like that I have read, especially when it comes to politics.
So really good job on that.

I don't really know that much about the person in question, so I wouldn't really know if you were exaggerating or not, but most of it just seemed like typical description.
And i did enjoy the husband part, but before reading it, I would have liked a little bit more background so I would know what I was getting into to.

(a little bit of something I was thinking while i read The person who apparently is Michelle Malkin, I thought was Michelle Obama and I was wildly thinking to myself, "Why is she sabotaging her husbands campaign." Because for me she was definitely the more prominent Michelle last year) hahaha

[kenderlord]

Oh! Right, no this is supposed to be taking place right now.

The Facts Were These: Orly Taitz was scarcely a blip during the campaign; it was only after Obama was inaugurated that she really came up as Queen Of The Birthers. It was only after Obama became President that the soldier Taitz represents could bring the lawsuit (that, given Obama's alleged non-citizen status, said soldier could not obey his orders as Commander-in-Chief, and therefore could not deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan.).

Hahaha oh god I don't want to make _anyone_ into charcuterie! What a sweeney-todd idea.

But yes, correct. it is Michelle Malkin.

Edit!

[innana88]

I love your satire. The danger is that your humor will only be picked up by a very narrow audience. I think there might be a few ways of expanding that audience slightly without resorting to drowning the story in exposition.

Here are a few suggestions:

Orly Taitz has such a melodic accent. Play. it. up. Use her dialect, I'm begging you. Make sure her sentences match her speaking rhythm and give us a clue of her intonations. Compare her to a warbling seagull or something. I don't know. I think you can do this without being too vicious simply by writing in dialect

Re: Edit!

[kenderlord]

This is always my trouble; I like doing the contrivance with political satire where, omg, it's That Person! at the end. But then I work so hard to disguise everything that it becomes inscrutable to people that are in the know.

I'm glad you share my distaste for writing in dialect. How would you do it? I had assumed, since she was speaking with her husband, it was probably Russian with interspersed Hebrew. And I didn't know how to put her weird speaking style into that. And the Hebrew! How does that play, incidentally? Should I gloss that sort of thing? Is it kinna snooty to not translate foreign phrases? Who the fuck speaks hebrew?

(additionally, my distaste for Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin is such that I feared greater characterization would result in demonizing, and I wanted to be nice, at least kinda.)

I missed you, Lindsey! Can we be editing buddies again, or are you gonna be super-busy this semester?

-D