Eartha Kitt was the best Catwoman. You probably knew that much already.

You may not know that she started out life as an abused orphan and a literal Fieldhand. You almost certainly don’t know that she was the victim of a post-McCarthyite decade-long blacklist perpetrated by the Democratic Party, not because she was a Commie, but because she made Lady Bird cry and pissed off LBJ himself in the same afternoon in the middle of the turbulent sixties, simply by telling the truth in polite company.

I heard about these stories from a harmless little boomer YouTube channel called “Cool Classics”.

The Shocking Life of Eartha Kitt Catwoman Batman 66 TV Series

I was watching it for brainless mind candy. Sometimes things work out differently from how you expect.

The picture above is screenshot-swiped from this video:

Eartha Kitt vs. LBJ – Newly Found Audio

And here is Ms. Kitt in her own words, years after the secret blacklist on her was reversed by Jimmy Carter:

Eartha Kitt: The White House Incident

Not only was she unable to find work anymore in Hollywood or much of anywhere else in the US for ten years, after speaking truth to power, but she got a dossier started on herself by the spooks. At the bidding, of course, of the DNC. And things didn’t change at all during the Nixon and Ford years either, because the Hollywood moguls continued to be loyal Dems, and those who ran and run the Dems didn’t want Eartha to thrive or even survive. She had to go find work in Europe to keep food on the table for herself and her daughter.

She never called for revolution like Malcolm. She never marched on Washington like MLK. She just went to a ladies luncheon with a bunch of influential white women, and politely called bullshit on the imperialist game–Vietnam, at the time–and what it was doing to the youth of America that they were supposedly there to discuss, and fix.

Instant blacklist. Instant dossier. Ten-plus years in the black hole of hegemonic disapproval.

Blue no matter who my ass.

***

If I was a better writer I’d just stop there.

In recent hours, Tulsi Gabbard quit the Democratic Party. Because, she says, they’ve turned into a bunch of lying, war-mongering hypocrites. Because, I say, offering Eartha’s story as proof, that’s what they’ve always been. Sure. By all means. Let’s have a luncheon to talk over what we’re going to for these poor, lost, unenlightened disadvantaged youth.

Besides, I mean, send them off to deserts and rice paddies to do the slave labor of colonialism with a gun, or consistently ignore the fact that they have very little economic alternative than to make themselves into good robot killer fieldhands for the Man.

Now I don’t have much use for a lot of what Tulsi had to say. She’s a religious fundie who just happens to be Hindu rather than Christian, and that alone is enough to make me very skeptical of her positions and views.

But she’s spot-on in saying that there is no place for her, or any truly thinking person, in the cozy confines of that elitist bag of blue manure we call the Dems.

Ms. Gabbard, I’ll make you a deal.

You’ve done the right thing, for a first step, and I salute you for it.

As for your next move, just please don’t join the Repubs, because they’re almost as bad, and obviously worse in some key ways.

If you can promise me to stay independent, and run Independent, I’ll give you my vote in 2024. Even if you continue to spout nonsense about transgenderism. Even if you continue to drone on about families and values in that way I find so very cringy. Even if you choose Liz Cheney as your running mate … Even though you flaked out in 2020 and endorsed Biden with your fingers crossed–I mean, so did our good man Bern … but I wax tangential.

I can’t vote for Trump or DeSantis. I can’t vote for whatever stooge the Dems will inevitably prop up on a stick to lure the unwary.

So keep your nose clean of party affiliation, and stay firm and strong about being against war, and I will vote for you, without hardly even holding my nose.

Let me know if this works for you, and Eartha be praised.