Today is the birthday of one of baseball’s greatest ever players, Joe DiMaggio.
Joe is also famous as the husband for nine months of Marylin Monroe. He couldn’t handle being the husband of a sex symbol; she divorced him, but, at the end of her life, he was one of her closest and truest friends. DiMaggio had half a dozen red roses delivered to Marilyn’s crypt three times a week for twenty years after her death. It is said that DiMaggio’s last words, when he died in 1999, were “I’ll finally get to see Marylin.”
Joe’s devotion to Marylin was beautiful. He loved her to the end. Its harder to know what to say about the Kennedy relationship with Marylin.
She was a stunning sex symbol. Jack was a virile married man.
In broader terms, what counts for essential sexual liberation for some is trashing of family life for others. If the fifties were too repressive and if Marylin was a part of the liberation from that repression, she was also very much a victim of the excesses of that social liberation.
Treating women as nothing more than sex objects is to completely devalue the whole of what women can be. Here is a poetic approach from me to understanding that devaluation in this context:
In the 50’s and 60’s that sort of objectification mistreatment of women was perhaps less well understood than it is now. Or was perceived and understood differently. The second and third waves of feminism have changed the way these things are seen a heck of lot since Marylin died.
So today I will attempt to channel the spirit of Joe DiMaggio, who wanted to build a family with Marylin, by paying tribute to the varied talents of three wonderful, unselfish freedom fighting women I’ve met this year, two of whom are fantastic mums and all of whom have in them what it takes to be a great mother. Another thing they have in common is that they have all been very good candidates in the current Victorian state election for Australia’s Freedom Party.
First of all is Rebekah Spelman. In helping Becky to write political speeches earlier this year, I engaged with one of the most astute and moral political minds of anybody I have ever met. No one this year that I know of has done more to work for unity in the freedom movement and to actually bring diverse people together than Becky Spelman.
Another beautiful Freedom Party candidate who has won my respect this year is Anastacia Ntouni. Ana is also astonishingly good at bringing people together for freedom. Her Greek DNA makes her a wonderful asset to the preservation of whats left of democracy in Victoria and to the cause of rebuilding it.
Thirdly is a freedom fighting woman with whom I have only had brief interactions, which have shown me that she is a wonderful wife and mother.
I have never seen a more physically beautiful woman in politics that Daniella Heatherich. What is wrong with celebrating that?
Geoff Fox, 25th November, 2022, Down Under
FREEDOM, DEMOKRASI AND CIVILISED HUMANITY 