Screw Hope. Trust Tenacity.

Published by Starshine Roshell on December 6, 2020

How Hannah-Beth Jackson Beat the Drum for Women’s Rights

Photo of Hannah-Beth Jackson by Paul Wellman

It was 11:56 p.m. on her final day of her final term in office — and things didn’t look good. “I had ’til midnight to get this bill passed, and I’d been working on it for years,” State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson says of her Paid Family Leave Act, aimed at protecting the jobs of folks who take leave to care for family. It had passed the Senate but needed 41 votes to clear the Assembly.

Fresh from a C-section, Rep. Buffy Wicks (D-Berkeley) showed up with her newborn to cast the 40th vote in favor. “We were running out of time,” Jackson recalls, “and I thought, We’re not gonna get there.”

And then (get this!) moderate Democrat Joaquin Arambula, who reps conservative Fresno and had publicly spoken out against the bill, voted in favor — tipping the ayes to 41.

A casual observer might call it luck. But anyone who’s followed Sen. Jackson’s career — her stint in the State Assembly from 1998 to 2004, and her two terms in the Senate, which officially ended Nov. 30 — knows it’s the result of the senator’s political mantra:

“Never ever, ever, ever, ever give up.”

My Crisis of Comedy

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 4, 2019

In unfunny era, comedian talks me off the Ledge-of-No-Laughter

All I ever really wanted to do was to make people laugh: Strangers in the PTA meeting at my son’s new school. Colleagues in a supposed-to-be-serious work meeting. The poor lady doing my mammogram. I especially love it when readers tell me they snorted so abruptly at the local café while reading this column that latte foam spewed from their nose. Propriety be damned, I sincerely believe it’s always the right time for humor.

Except … maybe … right now?

Continue reading My Crisis of Comedy

Don’t Say ‘Vagina’

Published by Starshine Roshell on July 5, 2012

It was the “vagina” heard round the world. Michigan State Rep. Lisa Brown was on the House floor, speaking out against a bill that would restrict abortion access, when she uttered these bons mots:

“And finally, Mr. Speaker, I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but no means no.”

From that place of interest, a great controversy was born. Republican House leaders barred Brown, a Democrat, from speaking in the state legislature the following day for trouncing on “the decorum of the House of Representatives.” They called into question her “maturity and civility.”

And feminists — as you might imagine — blew a flipping fuse. Brown and other women lawmakers performed The Vagina Monologues on the Capitol steps before 3,000 Michiganites waving signs like “MI-gina” and “I have a vagina, a voice, and a vote.” Their point, and it’s a good one: How can you dare legislate a body part that you can’t even speak of aloud?

But it’s disingenuous of Brown and her supporters to pretend that her speech wasn’t sexually charged — wasn’t explicitly, if a little deliciously, designed to make old men squirm.

Continue reading Don’t Say ‘Vagina’

Starshine Roshell

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