The Pima Community College soap opera continues as the current Board, despite demands to step down from students, business leaders and every teacher and employee group at PCC, has ignored all and named a new Chancellor.  Lee D. Lambert (LDL) will swim away from Shoreline and plop down in the searing summer heat of the Sonoran Desert.  According to reports, he is an expert in dealing with sexual harassment, a master of human resources.  (Maybe he will turn his fine hand to turning out the Board That Will Not Go.)

As preparation for his new position, I invite LDL to read The Art of War by Sun-tzu. Only then will he truly understand the littered battlefield he is walking into – the shattered lives and careers, the paranoia and pain that is the legacy of Roy Flores, his band of groupies (many still in place) and a Board that sat mutely on the sidelines as Roy moved and manipulated his employees like toy soldiers.

I am one of the casualties of Roy’s war, hired and fired without cause, subjected to his grossly inappropriate sexual behavior. In between his bathtub phone calls and heartfelt readings to me, in his office, of Ode to a Beautiful Nude by Pablo Nerudia, he once confided that his favorite book, one he urged me to read, was The Art of War by Sun-tzu.

Hey, LDL, take a read. You will better understand what awaits you.

Flores viewed warfare as a sacred act; it oriented his world and guided his interactions with every employee. We were his enemy, and I imagined him at night with plastic toy soldiers spread before him on his bedspread, moving them strategically back and forth, commanding and in charge.

He brought these skills into the workplace each day, moving and manipulating employees to follow his whims. A quote from Sun-tzu that captures the charge Roy took seriously in dealing with employees:

Display profits to entice them. Create disorder and take them.

    If they are substantial, prepare for them; if they are strong, avoid them.

    If they are angry, perturb them; be deferential to foster their arrogance.

    If they are rested, force them to exert themselves.

    If they are united, cause them to be separated.

    Attack where they are unprepared.

    Go forth where they will not expect it.

    These are the ways military strategists are victorious. (Sun-tzu, The Art of War)

“Create disorder, cause them to be separated, perturb them, attack where they are unprepared.” And so Roy did. He undermined, underused, rendered paranoid, seduced and abandoned so many of us.

Flores’ tactics were not isolated to the eight women who called him out for his sexual misconduct.  He spread his tactics greedily, hungrily among all employees.  In addition to sophomoric seductions, others, male and female, were subjected to warfare wrapped in rage, whimsy and ruthlessness.

Sun-tzu was Roy’s master; Roy’s employees were his pawns; the Board members were his witless accomplices, smiling rubber-stampers without ears or eyes.  (When did ignorance and avoidance become valid defenses?)

I urge the lawyers, mediators and new chancellor to read The Art of War to fully understand the climate of distrust and paranoia that Roy wove, and that lives on today. A promise was included in Pima Community College’s response to the Higher Learning Commission to “make whole” the lives of the women who called him out on his sexual deviation. You will not understand what “make whole” means unless you grasp the enormity of dysfunction sown during Flores’ reign.

LDL needs to know Roy did not act alone but surrounded himself with a tight, inner circle.  They bit into his apple of seduction and the bestowing of high-paying jobs, and lost their way.  There are many working at the college who remain afraid of what this inner circle might still do to their lives and careers.

If LDL is to put Pima Community College back together again, and truly make all of us whole, he has to understand the depth of the holes Roy dug in so many lives. He has to get rid of the groupies and the blind and deaf Board. Only then, can PCC mediate, process and claw its way out of the chaos Roy created. Only then will we be able to truly believe PCC’s commitment to restoring wholeness for this community, for us all.

Pima Community College has offered survivors the promise of being made whole after enduring nine years of Roy Flores, his groupies and a Board that sat mutely on the sidelines as Roy moved and manipulated his employees like toy soldiers. In the PCC Corrective Action Plan, sent to the Higher Learning Commission in March, PCC declared its intention and promise: “Make whole the individuals who came forward with allegations of sexual harassment.”

The line leapt out from the page, grabbed my heart, and gave me hope. I am one of the eight.

In my year as the director of government relations at PCC, my office was one door away from Flores’s. He was my boss; I studied him closely because my survival depended on it. From business calls when his splashes and “oops” clearly indicated he was in the bathtub, to Ode to a Beautiful Nude readings in his office, I knew I had to be hyper-alert.  One day, he confided that his favorite book, one he urged me to read, was The Art of War by Sun-tzu.  When I read the book, Flores’ tactics finally made sense.

Flores viewed warfare as a sacred act; it oriented his world and guided his interactions with every employee. We were his enemy, and I imagined him at night with plastic toy soldiers spread before him on his bedspread, moving them strategically back and forth, commanding and in charge.

He brought these skills into the workplace each day, moving and manipulating employees to follow his whims. A quote from Sun-tzu that captures the charge Roy took seriously in dealing with employees:

 Display profits to entice them. Create disorder and take them.

    If they are substantial, prepare for them; if they are strong, avoid them.

    If they are angry, perturb them; be deferential to foster their arrogance.

    If they are rested, force them to exert themselves.

    If they are united, cause them to be separated.

    Attack where they are unprepared.

    Go forth where they will not expect it.

    These are the ways military strategists are victorious. (Sun-tzu, The Art of War)

“Create disorder, cause them to be separated, perturb them, attack where they are unprepared.” And so Roy did. He undermined, underused, rendered paranoid, seduced and abandoned so many of us.

Flores’ tactics were not isolated to eight women.  They were spread greedily, hungrily among all employees.  For too many women, warfare came wrapped in sophomoric seductions; others, male and female, were subjected to warfare wrapped in rage and ruthlessness.

Sun-tzu was Roy’s master; Roy’s employees were his pawns; the Board members were his witless accomplices, smiling rubber-stampers without ears or eyes.  When did ignorance and avoidance become valid defenses?

I hope the lawyers, mediators and chancellors, interim and permanent, read The Art of War.  Sun-tzu was Roy’s muse and guide to weaving a climate of distrust and paranoia that lives on today. Roy’s tenure at PCC was nothing less than a nine-year battle maneuver that upended lives, destroyed careers and wreaked havoc, both psychological and economic.  Many are still recovering.

Make us whole.

The trouble is he did not act alone but surrounded himself with a tight, inner circle.  They bit into his apple of seduction and the bestowing of high-paying jobs, and lost their way.  Through the years, he invited others into this inner circle and for a moment you felt like a chosen one.

“I have been noticed,” you thought to yourself.  “He deems me worthy, he deems me good.”  There were giggles and dinners, expensive bottles of wine and late night texts with jokes and intimacies not just from him, but from all on the inside. It was as if you were being rushed for a sorority, the best one on campus.

But just as quickly, it was over.  You were demoted, sent to an office to serve out the time on your contract, dispatched to a distant campus, fired. He spread paranoia like fertilizer, cultivated spies, divided and conquered and then did it some more.

If the College’s intent is to truly make us whole, it has to understand the depth of the holes he dug in all of our lives. It has to get rid of the groupies and the blind and deaf Board.

Only then, can it mediate, process and claw its way out of the chaos created at PCC under the hand of Roy. Only then will I really believe its commitment to restoring wholeness for this community, for us all.

I finally saw her yesterday, 17 months after that day.  Her smile unchanged, the generosity of her spirit in full bloom, the intellect, compassion and her love of life and people still palpable.  In the picture hanging behind our heads, Gabe smiles down.

We were all together for a farewell to the office.  Team Giffords: an assortment of individuals all extraordinary.  They locked the office after we left and it sat empty all night, awaiting what happens today at the polls.   The phones silent, the desks cleared.  Her office stripped of photos and so many awards.  An empty monument to her extraordinary years of service.   I know she has much more to give, but in this caesura between what was and what will be, I feel compelled to hold a deep space for just this moment.  A pause, and in the quiet, my heart grieves; I struggle at how the world can, in a split second of time, turn on its head.

In all my pondering about what truly is “learning to be female,” I am realizing that Death can be our wisest teacher.  My first encounter with death was when I lost my mother when I was just 28.  A loss that profoundly changed the course of my life.  Hers was sudden, unexpected – the type of death that can be most difficult to reconcile.  When my father died in 1993, I had six full months between his lung cancer diagnosis and his death to come to terms, be with him, have those conversations that can heal our souls.  And then came 2011.  The speed of the bullets, the finality with which they did their business, followed by the sudden death of my beloved brother in December.   These are the deaths that either bury us, or wake our own souls more fully alive.

With help from so many, my soul remains alive and full.  Yoga, breathing, prayer, wise words and love have enabled me to chase big pockets of the stress and fear out of my body, so that I might fully inhabit instead.  Realizing  just how quickly life can change has led me deeper inside of myself, listening, tending and bringing to life my own tiny dreams and visions.  Fighting more completely for my own soul, vision and voice has been a gift that was given, and that I chose to accept from all that went down last year.

Allowing for the full flow of grief through me has strengthened my mighty little heart.  And in this tiny interval, the transition from what was to what will be, I say a deep prayer for Gabe, for Christina for all we lost and another deep prayer for how we all might try and live better, truer lives as we move forward.

Friday night at Centennial Hall, as I watched Alvin Ailey’s dance troupe perform his signature piece, Revelations, I imagined Trayvon Martin on stage, in the middle of all that beauty and movement, his soul being rocked in the bosom of Abraham.

Revelations was first performed in 1960 and its three parts tell a story of the pain of racism, a pain borne by millions of individuals throughout our nation’s history, and borne still by every one of us today.

The opening section of Revelations, entitled “Pilgrim of Sorrow, begins where we are today in the story of Trayvon:  bodies heavy, arms reaching toward heaven, bearing the pain of the death of this 17-year-old, yearning for deliverance from all that our shared history of racism has wrought.

The dancers, dressed somberly in earth-colored skin tones, transform in the second section, “Take Me to the Water,” into lightness of being. A ceremonial baptism is enacted, a dance of purification. The dancers wear white, and one holds aloft a large umbrella draped in white satin that performs its own dance of sorts, lilting and swaying while at the feet of the dancers, yards of billowing blue silk stretch across the stage.

‘Bathe that sweet boy,” is all I can think as I watch the fabric rise and fall, moved by dancers on either end of the stage who are invisible to the audience. The motion of the fabric is hypnotic, so real I can hear the splash, feel the cool drops on my face.

“Wash us all,” I think. “Wash this nation and all of us in it who carry in our bodies the deep, deep scars of racism and hatred.”

Just yesterday, as I waited to turn left on Campbell Avenue, a black man crossed the street and I watched, aware that while I consider myself enlightened and non-racist, there is that place in my own belly that can quicken and hold, a tinge of fear lodged deeply in my bones can be triggered by the color of a person’s skin.  It was placed there not by the words of acceptance and peace my parents taught me but by a long, sad history that dwells deep in our collective blood and bone. Set my people free.

A giant sun dominates the stage in the last section, “Move, Members, Move!”  Dancers dressed in shades of yellow cool themselves with hand-held fans that move rapidly and in unison, demonstrating how deep belief and faith can air us out, transform and heal.

I imagined Trayvon in the middle of these dancers, cooled by those fans, smiling broadly, held in the circle of faith and belief.  His body transformed by the healing yellow light and energy of the sun.

“Tell us, Trayvon, tell us,” I thought to myself as I watched.  “You were taken so that we might all awaken. Cleanse our own tired bodies of the stink of racism that remains alive in our nation, in our lives, in our hearts.”

We need to sit still a moment, let ourselves be rocked in the bosom of Abraham, the bosom of nature, the bosom of faith.  In this quiet, we can reach across the lines of color that bisect our nation and speak and live with truth, work together for justice, allowing his death to heal and transform.

This is Zoe.  She is our rescue beagle.  In the years before we got her, someone tatooed her ear, severed her ability to bark and let her wander the streets of L.A. until found by a child on his way to school whose teacher lived next door to our niece who called us; my husband drove to LA to bring Zoe to Tucson.  Quite a back-story for a 23 pound beagle.

Given her history,  I do not blame her for sticking out her tongue.  Not sure why she is doing it in this shot since the one who took this picture was our niece who was the reason Zoe found her way from the streets of L.A. to a very cushy and pampered life  in Tucson. Zoe lives most hours of the day sleeping in the sun on her own little pillow in the backyard or on one of our several couches or chairs.  In our house, Zoe rules.

I want to make a poster of this picture and flash it every time Antenori opens his mouth.  Among his most recent assertions:  “I’ve been fighting communists, socialists and for liberty and freedom since the day my feet hit the ground,”  Not sure how many of those we have in Tucson or how crucial that is to his ability to represent this district in Washington, D. C.,  but I think it is a statement for which Zoe’s gesture is well-deserved.

And then there is Jesse Kelly who invokes God so often you would think he was his campaign manager.  Since god is just dog spelled backward, I think Zoe takes this one especially personal.

The list could go on and on, and I am sure there are Democratic politicians running around who deserve the tongue of Zoe.  I know also that any one breathing the words, Rio Nuevo, or griping one more time about the street car or even questioning whether there has been any progress downtown – Zoe, tongue, please stick out now.

I know that civil behavior is having whole institutes built in its name, and I applaud these efforts.  But I figure when we live in a world where you need to create institutions around something that should be as natural as breathing, we are in a peck of trouble.  And with 24-hour news cycles and all that dead air to fill, civility ranks way below ratings and trying to be heard among all the babble.

In truth, Zoe is her own little institute of civil behavior.  She doesn’t have an aggressive bone in her body, she knows how to say thank you with tail-wagging vigor, and she is the best darned cuddler in the world.  I think she could lick the meanness right out of any politician or pundit.  We need more Zoe’s in this world.

In the dream, a blue-robed woman commanded me to come, follow.  There was a black wall, long and tall, that had kept me back for years, centuries, forever.  I sat down beside it.  I was with a man who did not want me to go.  He said, “I am afraid.”  I asked him, “Must I also be afraid?” and he said, “Yes, you must, you must.”

The man fell down upon his face and wept. He said, “I cannot do it. You are strange and terrible. You command me to lead you into fearful places.”

 I looked down upon him.  I saw a living picture upon his white back change. A mangled red bird gnawed at his throat until his head fell off. A new head grew upon the man.  Then the man looked down and saw the red bird pecking at his throat. He seized the bird and killed it.  When I saw this, I felt great pity. I knelt down beside the man who lay weeping upon the ground. I picked him up in my arms, and sat beside the black wall. I said to him, “Wait, I have seen what is written upon your back. You will be healed.”

Grief then, my own, overwhelmed me. I sat and wailed.  Cried the tears of forever, for all that has been and that should be no more. Suddenly, a gate appeared in the wall and out flew many phantoms. They whirled about us, but I told them to leave him alone. “He sleeps.”

They vanished.

Before me, fire sprang up from the earth. It became a tree of fire. Above, I beheld the star. I laid the man upon the ground and bathed his face with water.  I turned and went toward the great gate in the black wall. It sprang open for me. I entered a cavern. It was dark.

A woman in a blue robe walked ahead of me. I approached to speak to her. She put her finger to her lips and said, “Follow me.  You enter upon a place of fear.”

I said, “Why should I follow you?”

I saw that she was an old withered woman. She said, “You have little faith. Behold.” She pulled off her robe. I saw a beautiful woman. She was all green and about her was a green light.  She put on the blue robe and changed again into the old woman.

She said, “You enter among the ghosts. Cover your face with this gray veil. They must not see you.”

I did as she bade me. We entered a great circle in the rocks. I saw ghosts and phantoms whirling around, moaning, writhing.  Some reached down to clutch us with great claws. Others were beautiful and voluptuous. Still others with pinched and haggard faces screamed and rent the air.

The woman at my side said, “I will show you.” She walked to the center of the circle.

There the phantoms clutched  and tore at her. I cried out in fear. Then by some strange magic, she became whole again and led me forth from that place of dread out upon the narrow path beyond. I asked, “How did we emerge?”

She said, “I was with you. Without me, you would have been lost. You have passed through a dark region of your own soul.”

Sunday morning and a wisp of old moon hangs low in the sky.  The dark moon this month falls on February 21, the two-month anniversary of  my brother’s death.  It was a waning gibbous moon on the day he collapsed, a waning crescent on the day he died.  It was fat and full on January 8, 2012, the one-year anniversary of the Tucson shootings and the day we held a service for my brother in Southern California in the Methodist Church where all five of us Jackson kids had been baptized.

This Sunday morning, I feel like it is finally New Year’s Day.  The blur I have traveled through that began with bullets on January 8, 2011, and ended with a deadly butterfly brain tumor in December is beginning to lift.  The lifting has not come easily.  It has required therapy, exercise, journal work and painting.  It has led me toward wine and carbs and then pulled me back to healthier ways of being.

Damn Thirsty is one of my very favorite poems of Hafiz, the great Sufi mystic who lived in the 14th century.  When you read his poetry, the words blend Christian/Muslim/Mystic into a seamless whole.  You forever have to remind yourself that he wrote long ago because his words, even now, simmer and slam with truth and beauty; he is just so damned wise. 

Damn Thirsty 

First

The fish needs to say,

“Something ain’t right about this

Camel ride –

And I’m

Feeling so damn

Thirsty.”

The image of a fish trying to ride a camel hits homes.  How much I have done in my own life that feels just like that – me being or doing things that match up with what I think my family and the world wants me to be, actions  in sync with the way my external body happens to look, but that felt alien to my own innards, my own dreams and the deep stirrings of who I really am.  The lesson I take from the last year is that my insides and outsides simply must live in harmony.

I have always been intrigued with the synchronicity that our unconscious minds ignore but that are right in front of us if we tune in. This morning, after several encounters with “orange,” I finally paid attention.  I had an orange for breakfast, chopped up the orange flesh of a butternut squash for a dish I am making, and just changed my Facebook to an orange-hued frame.  “What is this about?” I wondered when I realized the orange-tinged theme that was coloring this nearly moonless Sunday morning.

I immediately went to my chakra book and was thrilled to be reminded that orange is the color emanating from the second, sacral chakra.  Part of my healing work has involved a much deeper tapping into this body of mine.  Learning the places inside my body where grief grabs hold hard and refuses to let go; I have taken on these areas with meditation, yoga, and a much deeper tending of the type of foods I am using for fuel.

It is the Sacral Chakra that associates with the color orange or red-orange, that area just below the belly button that is paradise central, holding the magic and mystery of female sexuality and generativity.  As the book told me, “This chakra often offers us the opportunity to lessen our “control issues” and find a balance in our lives…making changes in our life stream through our personal choices…maintaining a healthy yin-yang existence.”

All this orange, to me, is a great sign of life force beginning to again flow through me. I imagine a bright orange light emanating from my pelvic region, alive, pulsing, compelling me to create, breathe, sweat and live. I have been “so damn thirsty,” but am clearly making progress in taking in what I need to sate my thirst.  I am a fish that has finally jumped off that camel, and gotten back into the pool of life that sustains.  Today, I am going to eat one more orange, blend that butternut squash with pungent herbs and spices, and prepare to light one more candle, on what will be a moonless February 21, in honor of my brother, whose death is serving to move me toward a much more authentic life.

The other afternoon in yoga, I got the giggles.  I was lying there among the other black-clad women, my right leg dutifully twisted beneath my torso, and me, bent over that right-angled leg, nose to the floor.  Pigeon is what they call it, and I am lying there, my hip muscles screamingly open, and I started to giggle.

Our teacher, a former ballet dancer, was versed in Ashtanga yoga – the one where you hold the poses and let your breath ease its way into stuck places.  This beautiful, graceful woman, who managed to slip in a demonstration of her mastery of the splits, was not as adept when it came to counting.  Five was her favored number for holding all poses except pigeon and then she glommed on to 15 – which is a hellishly long time when lying face down with one leg twisted beneath your body.  She counted to 15 slower than a turtle ambling through a vast sea of honey, and all I could do was giggle.

What struck me as I had religiously and with great purpose folded myself into pigeon is how damned serious everything is – the economy, the next election, shrinking stock portfolios, the horrors of our educational system and whether a yoga pose is correct.  It is, without question, a deeply serious time.

But as I watch Newt bad-mouthing the media, his truth-telling ex-wives and lobbyists everywhere,  I can only laugh.  I am so sick of listening to all of them, every one, male and female, Dem, Repub, liberal, conservative.  Spouting, promising, blaming and preaching while all of us everyday Americans just keep on struggling.

We need laughter desperately.  We need humor and perspective and nuance and patience.  And in this uber-speed world we live in, none of that abounds.

So I began to focus on pigeons – those nasty birds that mess up the sides of buildings and seem to be everywhere, and I decided to learn more about what they represent.  What is this bird that led me toward giggles and glee, even as my body was folded into excruciating angles?

According to the books on the symbols, pigeons represent “return to the love and security of home.”  Doves and pigeons are interchangeable in the symbol world, and I realized this pigeon pose that got me laughing was leading right back to the center of myself, to a far more honest way of being, to feeling and being utterly at home in my own skin no matter what is happening in the greater world.

One other detail about pigeons that delighted me:  “they breed rapidly and publicly.”

Not that I am going to take on that kind of behavior, but the idea of being all of who I am, me, in my very own skin and letting all that breed “rapidly and publicly” filled me with delight. What kind of world would this be if we all learned to trust and live our own instincts, not worry about the rest of the flock and listen, truly and deeply to the songs of our unique souls?

Two days before Christmas and we have not a single gift beneath the Christmas tree which itself is 8-feet tall with multi-colored lights and ornaments that span forty years worth of  living.  Just two days ago, as the light of the Winter Solstice began its shift from darkness to light, my beloved brother Don slipped through the shifting rays.

This year has thrust upon me too many humbling lessons of grief.  Split seconds when time and light shift and shimmer and take away the ones we love.  On January 8, it was a storm of bullets that I watched spew from a small gun that took away Gabe, that utterly transformed Gabrielle and that threw Pam and Ron to the sidewalk sparing their lives but profoundly altering their sense of safety and sanity.

Nine days ago, I was sitting in our kitchen, the first day of nearly three weeks off – quiet time needed desperately to do a bit more healing from what I witnessed  last January. My brother’s partner Cynthia called from Austin to ask me our family history of seizures and cancer.  My brother Don, the strong, healthy, athletic one, the songwriter, chiropractor and father of three wonderful children – had collapsed in his office and was in ICU.

This one call produced a frenzy of more calls, plane reservations, car rentals as all the rest of us raced to Austin.  We are and have been forever the Jackson Five – oldest brother Dan, then me, then Don and his twin David and Gayle.  I understand the power of five, know the dynamics of five-way interaction – and Don was the one who would outlive us all.  The one I always thought if anything ever happened to my husband, I could move to Austin and live close to him.

Don was the one with the roaring sense of humor, who always called me Jack and who could nudge my shoulder when I tended to get too intense and gentle me right out of it.

He was taken out not by a single speeding bullet but by a brain cancer so aggressive that he was gone in seven short days.  He went from jogging last Monday to dead on Tuesday.

And so I sit here, no presents under the tree, having no idea how we will survive as the Jackson Four, wondering what it is I am supposed to learn from this year of grief and the unexpected.  I have no answers, I have no bitterness, I have deep, deep pain that is now a part of my being and the fierce desire to make good of all this – to more deeply appreciate the sound of our beagle chewing his breakfast and lapping up his water, to keep my own heart – so altered by all that has gone down this year – open to possibility, love and trust.  That, I believe, will be a gift that can’t be wrapped but is there for the taking.

It is hard to claim sexism in the Redistricting Commission debacle when it is one woman hustling another woman out the door without pause for due process, cause or a bit of politeness.  But I keep trying to imagine a male head of the Commission being ousted with such breathtaking speed or that a man would have been subject to such intense speculation about his wife’s political connections as Chair Colleen Mathis has had to deal with about her husband’s politics. Colleen Mathis has not been swift-boated, but instead has been swift-booted.

It is especially tough this week watching the story play out while at the same time Candidate Herman Cain is spending his time in front of cameras calling four, that is four, different professional women, utter and complete liars.  Cain is in the middle of not just a classic case of he said/she said but rather a grand operatic saga of  he-said-she said-she said-she said-she said.  And the poor victimized guy can only claim he didn’t do a thing wrong.

The song that is stuck in my brain with all this latest news is Go Away Little Girl – a song that apparently has such a compelling message that it has been recorded over the years by, among others, Steve Lawrence, Bobby Vee, Johnny Mathis and Donny Osmond. If you haven’t heard it, the song tells the story of what must be an older guy who has the hots for a young thing and is gallantly urging her to go away cause “our lips must never meet,” and given their age difference  “it will never work out.”

If Cain had minded these lyrics and tended to his lobbying, he wouldn’t be having to defend his fine honor against so many lying, scheming females.  But since Cain ignored the important message of the song, and urged the younger women to come hither instead of gallantly urging them to go away, it is not worth rewriting the words for him.

Instead, I have been moved to rewrite the lyrics for Governor Brewer, who boldly smacked Mathis aside as if she were just some little girl instead of a Yale grad, who oozes class, restraint and intelligence.  So this is for you, Governor Brewer, written so that you can sing for us what I imagine to be the true motivation behind this swift-boot controversy: