Brett Berk

There’s been a good deal of media coverage recently of a book called Daddy’s Roommate. This little piece of children’s literature was originally published in the early ’90s, so why is it suddenly the subject of a shit-storm? Well, it’s because of the person John McCain’t chose to share his rocket to the bottom, the vindictive, dim-witted, prevaricating, creationist Sarah “Baracuda” Palin. Apparently, back when Sarah was just a City Councilperson in teensy Wasilla, Alaska, she spotted the title in the local library, and told some other government types that she felt it “didn’t belong there”. Being literate and intelligent, they read the book–which attempts to explain man-on-man love to preschoolers–and found it inoffensive, but when they suggested that Sarah do the same, she resisted. “I don’t need to read that stuff,” she said. Way to go, Sarah. She knows smut when she sees it. Ban Before Reading, indeed. If she had bothered to read the book, she might have had a different reaction. The Gay Uncle certainly did back when he first cracked it, finding it in a bookstore the year it came out during a shopping trip for the pre-school he ran. In those days, there was a dearth of books for young kids on this topic, and since he was a big fag and had two other gay male teachers working at his school (and since teaching kids to embrace diversity is part of educating them on how to be HUMAN) he felt obligated to buy it. Now that there are many better options (G.U. is currently working on an article reviewing “The New Queer Kids’ Media”) he feels like he can safely say that Daddy’s Roommate is a crappy and outdated book. First of all, roommate? Even the wretched word “partner” is superior to this. And the characters? Though it came out in 1994, the two guys seem firmly stuck in the strange preppy/clone era of 1982, with collar-up polo shirts, shaggy hairdos, debonair mustaches, cable-knit sweaters, and–perhaps most importantly–a baby grand piano around which they gather to sing show tunes. The ultimate message of GAY=HAPPY seems somewhat bland and naive as well. But as silly and retrograde as the book may be, there’s no reason that it should be BANNED FROM A PUBLIC LIBRARY, any more than any of the other books (and God knows what else) S.P. wants tossed on the burn pile. We must stop these Republican monsters. The Gay Uncle went canvassing for Barack yesterday afternoon, and highly recommends it:click here to sign up.

Barack has pleased the Gay Uncle even more recently with his announcement that he plans to spend about ten billion (with a b) dollars a year on early childhood education, helping to expand its availability to under-served communities with young kids which, since we currently have no coordinated national early childhood education policy, and since our current Idiot-In-Chief has seen fit to repeatedly propose budget cuts for the limited programs that exist, includes just about everyone in America. This counts in Gunc’s mind as just one more reason to vote for the big O. If you’re not convinced that expanding quality E.C.E. offerings is a useful, functional, and economical investment, perhaps you should read the works of James Heckman–a University of Chicago economist, winner of the Nobel Prize, and influential adviser to the current Democratic candidate–whose research has shown that every buck spent on pre-K schooling and infant and family care and education, saves seven to ten dollars down the line on programs like special ed, remedial ed, and prisons. Still not convinced that Barry’s your family man? Then check out John McCain’s early childhood plan:

That’s not a typo (Gunc never makes mistakes; he went to a good preschool.) That’s it, in detail. Nada. Of course, you could also go with the Palin Proposal which includes insuring that school-age kids receive no real information about reproductive health, and that every teenage girl that gets pregnant accidentally, or through rape or incest, is forced to drop out, have the baby, marry the father, and stay home. Hey, maybe some of these barefoot teens will get together and start a creationist home-school collective, and you can send you kids there! Talk about Ownership Society.

Check out The Gay Uncle’s automotive musings in this week’s Stick Shift column on Vanity Fair dot-com, where he combines his two interests–kids and cars.

While the number of women with kids is in decline–having a rather obvious correlative effect on birth rates–there is apparently a “bright spot” out there for those of you who think that extending the glorious rein of human beings on this earth is a good idea: single men having babies. They usually need a little help with this process, either enlisting a surrogate or adopting–in both cases, requiring a woman–but they’re raising the motherless packets of joy on their own. And once they develop their daddy-legs, it seems most of them aren’t particularly interested in coupling up and sharing the task. Like with most other things–TV remotes, masturbating, cooking–guys prefer to have complete control. Some of these #1 dads are gay, some are straight, and some are…Ricky Martin, who’s having twins via gestational outsourcing, so this drive is not just confined to one sexual community. The most successful (parent-wise) among them–as with all other parents–are those who are willing to enlist help from friends, family members, and paid employees, allowing them to gain perspective, maintain their Fantasy Football League commitments, and generally burst out of their Parenting Bubbles.

As you know, the Gay Uncle doesn’t personally believe in reproducing: unless you’ve figured out how to build a baby with gills, radiation resistance, and integrated UV blockers. (While he believes strongly in HOPE during this election cycle, he’s a bit more cynical about the longer-term future.) But he totally supports those of you who are more optimistic, vain, or in need of something cute and cuddly (and cry-y) around the house. So if you’re one of these partnerless partriarchs, and you’ve gone ahead and paid the $100,000 it costs to plant your seed in a suitable carrier, you can certainly afford to spend another $13.95 to pick up a copy of his book, so when Junior is born, at least you won’t totally ruin the little darling.

The Gay Uncle went to visit a friend this weekend at the house she’d recently bought upstate. Since he’d last seen her, she’d had one baby boy, and managed to get herself pregnant with another. She and her hubby seem to be doing a great job with the kid–he’s chatty and sweet, and more importantly, doesn’t seem to need constant adult input in order to enjoy himself. But they seem to be struggling (like many folks) on the parent-friend front. The other moms and dads they meet these days are all INSANE. This didn’t exactly surprise Gunc. (Have you read his book?) What did surprise him was his friend’s illustrative story. They recently hosted a party for their son’s first birthday and, as with most parties, there were a bunch of people there, some of whom knew each other, and some who didn’t, but all of whom were connected through the host. The day after the celebration, a mommy-pal emailed the hosts. Her tone immediately went from zero to irate. “It came to my attention during the birthday event that some of your guests recognized my daughter, apparently from photos you posted on your Flickr page. How dare you exploit my child, and put her at risk like this! I need you to remove those pictures right away, and desist from adding any others. If you want to put your son in danger, that’s your business, but my family won’t be party to this practice.” Now the G.U. understands kids’ right to privacy, but recognizing the children of your peers’ pals at a birthday isn’t exactly tantamount to endangerment; that’s called “being friendly”. Studies have shown conclusively that the danger of on-line predators is grossly exaggerated by the media, with some explorations even stating that the numbers of actual examples are too small to draw any useful conclusions about incidence. Kids are at a monumentally greater risk getting in a car, being left with relatives, living near a pool, or being entrusted in the care of their parents (four kids a day in the U.S. die from parental abuse and neglect.) So, parents: relax. Also, when something does freak you out: check yourselves and your tone. If you’re not sure whether you’re going off half-cocked, feel free to send your draft email to the Gay Uncle first. He’s happy to let you know if you sound like a demented wacko. (Hint: you probably do.)

The Gay Uncle is angry about so many things right now, most of them having to do with the Republicans and their vile Hate-Fest in the Mid-West. (Favorite moment: the “spontaneous” chant in response to Rudy Ghoul-iani’s invocation of the need to tap oil reserves in protected regions: Drill Baby Drill! Drill Baby Drill! Are these people out of their fucking minds, or what?) But one thing he’s decidedly NOT angry about is a little song his nine year-old niece Amber made up. It goes like this:

Everybody has a secret
My secret is, I made out with a sturgeon fish
It’s much better than a cuttlefish
Da-da-da-da-da-da. Doo-doo-doo.

Of course, while he’s not mad about this ditty, he does have some concerns. First, Gunc has seen cuttlefish close up during his recent trip to the Caribbean, and he thinks they’re kind of adorable (see photo on left). Sturgeon, on the other hand, are scaly, angular, and vaguely pre-historic looking, like a bad Brutalist rendering of a sea creature (see photo on right). So he’s uncertain of his niece’s taste in aquatic kissing partners. Secondly, he wonders why she’s writing a song about the distinctions between kissing these two fish in the first place. (He thinks it may be a result of his taking her to the Key West Aquarium some years back; that, and Finding Nemo.) Finally, it should be noted that in the illustrated lyric sheet included with this song, niece Amber drew the following: a picture of herself in mid-pucker, a plus sign, a picture of a sturgeon, a picture of a cuttlefish with a red-slashed no-symbol through it, an equals sign, and a picture of a half-fish/half-human boy, leaving the G.U. confused about what exactly happened between his niece and the plated bottom dweller. He believes that people should be able to sing about whatever they want, but he does not want any piscine Bristol Palin-type shenanigans going on in his family.

Do yourself a favor and check out this week’s Stick Shift column on Vanity Fair’s website. The Gay Uncle outs his first Closet Case Car.

The Gay Uncle is burning up, and it’s not simply the fact that he’s in Austin, Texas where it’s 98 degrees at 11:00 at night. He just discovered that the Mayor of his fair city has snuck a pilot program into the upcoming school-year plan allowing standardized tests to be given to kindergarten kids. He’s all for useful measurement being completed–after all, he spends a good portion of his professional life helping people like PBS make sure that their programming actually teaches kids what it claims to. But there’s a huge difference between a optional, one-off, research project intended to help a quality educational program receive federal funding; and a systematic, citywide, requisite battery of testing for five year-olds, which will be used to force them into ability tracks, and punish their schools and teachers. Wasn’t it the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution that outlawed cruel and unusual punishment (or is that another one of the ones that the Bush Administration did away with in the past few years?) Once again the G.U. repeats his mantra: young kids should be allowed to be kids. That means, early childhood education should be dedicated to open-ended materials, play, and exposure to literacy materials–not multiple choice assessment. He thinks that any funds for this kind of testing would be much better spent expanding the promise of providing UNIVERSAL PRE-K–a promise which has yet to be fulfilled, forty-plus years after it was initiated with Head Start–and which has been scientifically proven to be one of the most important factors differentiating kids who succeed in school from those that struggle. Oooh. Things like this really make the Gay Uncle ANGRY.

With global warming, the start of September no longer means closing up the pool or deep-storing your Daisy Dukes, but where the G.U. lives in New York, it still means the arrival of the first day of school. Yet for many of the Gay Uncle’s friends, this day has already come and gone. He’s received a numerous humorous dispatches from readers about this banner event, but none rivals his friend Danika’s recent experience sending her two daughters–Erica, 8 and Anna, 5–off to the bus stop for their first joint trip to school. Danika was experiencing a host of feelings–wonder, sadness, excitement–as her girls strolled down the driveway to wait. Having grown up in New York City, Danika never rode a school bus, and so all of her ideas about what goes on inside one were formed by watching teen movies, and she felt a bit concerned about the kind of hazing, seating hierarchies, and brown bags full of flaming poo her girls might encounter on the crowded bus. So she was kind of surprised when the enormous yellow vehicle gurgled up, containing not a rolling frat party, but rather…3 silent children. Her daughters were riders 4 and 5, the last on the route. (Talk about carbon footprint!) Panic averted. However, Daika did get a chance to panic at the day’s end, as her daughters failed to arrive home at the appointed time–or even 10, 15, or 30 minutes later. Terrified that they’d been ground up for gelatin, abducted by Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin for her grotesque, far-right, Christian Home-Schooling cult, or forced to star in a remake of Lois Duncan’s schoolbus-kidnapping classic Five Were Missing she dialed the school repeatedly, only to get a busy signal. When she finally got through, she discovered that the girls were not disappeared, but rather, there in the office with their other three route-mates. Apparently, their ultra-responsible bus driver “forgot” that the initial school day ended before lunchtime, and so this tiny cohort had to wait until one of the other buses finished making its deposits so it could come back for them. Gunc tips his hat to this bus driver: way to help those parents through the tangled emotions of the first day.

Gunc has a new piece up on Babble, the magazine for smart and interesting parents. If you fit into those category descriptors, you may want to check it out. It’s called “Pinocchio Parenting” and it’s all about how and how not to lie to your kids. Click here. And while you’re on the site, check out the G.U.’s other fascinating pieces. Here’s one, and another.