LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Oh, Go Ahead, Get Her Started: An Interview with Kate Clinton |
by Andrea L.T. Peterson |
Dont Get Me Started [Ballantine, 1998] may be the title of Kate Clintons new book, but if you know her, then you know how she gets, and if you know how she gets, you know you just gotta get her started!! So, started I got her, and heres what she had to say. Clinton, who got her start outside of Buffalo, New York, finds perhaps her most meaningful inspirationnot for material, but for an open and honest way of life, from the poet Muriel Rukeyser, who taught a younger Clinton that "when a woman tells the truth of her life, the world splits open." Clintons world, and the world around her, has been splitting open nonstop for quite some time now. AdjudiKate, advoKate, domestiKate, mastiKate, suffoKatejust a few things a person in general does, Kate in particular does in her own particular way. In fact they are just a few of the words that head each chapter in Dont Get Me Started. After reading her new book, a sleepless night brought the realization that there are a few things Clinton does that certainly would have fit well in her list-o-Kates, a few things that characterize her humor and her approach to it, a few things missing from the book. So, what did she think about "investiKate?" "Mary Daly comes to mind," she says, "not MAYOR Daly." Daly, she continues, "was so important when I was getting my brain re-tooled for feminism. Look at the stuff hidden in the background," Daly admonished, "and shed light on it. Make light of it," says Clinton, "thats humor." So, naturally, Clinton thoroughly investigates and then does what she does best: instiKates. "Very nice," she says about the application of instigate to her and what she does. "I claim a lot for humor. It is primarily to entertain, but," she says with an impish grin discernible even through telephone wires, "I have always wanted to be cited for incitement to riot." Instigating, she says, is especially important now when "we are being lulled into thinking we have made it. Ellen is on tv; George Michael has come out." While daily papers are a great source of materialgrist for Clintons humor millone guaranteed old standby is "the father, the fatherland, the patriarchy. I wish men would do them [jokes about the patriarchy]," she quips, "then I could do some other jokes. But the truth is that the time is ripe and our little world rife with butts of jokes just waiting to be exploited. If "representations of the patriarchy" are out there, Clinton will find them and show them no mercy. And as far as Ellen being on tvwell, not for long. But was Ellen "too gay?" In response to the most over asked question of the yearaside from how lewd was Monica Lew(d)inskyClinton hopes Chastity Bono (who, for those who dont know, was quoted as saying "Ellen was too Gay") "was hideously taken out of context. I know she was. But it is true." For many, those she refers to as "the people against smiling," Ellen "WAS too gay." The whole thing, says Clinton, is a perfect illustration of "the continuing homophobia of the industry. This woman does a really dangerous thingshows that lesbians are human WOW!! And no one high up [in the industry] defends her." In spite of losing 30 minutes of Ellen a week, we are "moving forward," says Clinton, in the classic way that history progresses: "two steps forward, one step back." Or is that one step forward, two steps back. Either way....when there is progress, Clinton argues, there WILL be reactionseven from "ho-hum-osexuals" themselves. The danger, as she sees it, is that "because we are in entertainment, on tv, people will think that we dont have any more political work to do." That would be a serious error. There are many areas in need of some real resources and real work. "Employment, the nondiscrimination act, [same sex] marriage." On the subject of marriage, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is an especially enjoyable aspect for Clinton. "...Men who have been married a number of times apiece passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Lord knows it needs defending, but not from gay people. If theyd really been serious about defending it, theyd have called in the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms, and Tobacco." Then theres "gay retirement" and, of course lesbian retirement. "Not," she is quick to add, "that you ever retire from being a lesbian. I know that will be taken out of context!" Clinton, a recovering school teacher, wishes that her main concerns were "more birds at her feeders and doing something about all the cats" loose in her neighborhood keeping the birds away in spite of all the little birdie treats she puts out for them (the birds). But she suspects that there are actually more important thingslike older people and "yoots," better known to most people as our youth, a wildly fascinating group of the population that Clinton feels is showing impressive "concern for social justice." Shes excited about what is happening "on college campuses, in schools, in businessesthe number of companies granting domestic partnership benefits (with the exception of Ross Perot)," she says, "is very exciting. Theres a lot happening, and a lot more that needs to happen. "I thought Id be happier living in a super power," she says, not entirely jesting. "The patriarchy is so da...da!" Well, yeah, and thats why its so important to get Clinton and others like her "started." Grab a copy of Dont Get Me Started (in stores now.) |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 8, No. 5, May 22, 1998. |