So, the Octomom is giving out parenting advice. (And banal advice at that. You’d think after 14 kids you could come up with something more insightful than “good manners, good role models and a good education.”) Doing something to excess doesn’t automatically translate into doing it well. What’s next? Dating advice from Tiger Woods?

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Vanessa at Feministing.com today draws attention to a recent Lady Gaga interview in the L.A. Times that does an incredible job of articulating the larger meaning behind Gaga’s shape-shifting, MTV award-winning performances. It’s easy to dismiss Lady Gaga as a one-dimensional pop sensation solely because of her mainstream popularity—we’re not so much in the habit of looking at pop stars as performance artists. And it’s always slightly obnoxious when stars anoint themselves with icon status, which Gaga essentially does in this interview ("I don't see myself as ever being like anybody else.") But there’s something very sound about writer Ann Powers' parallel between Gaga’s stunning physical transformations and the work of photographer Cindy Sherman, a woman who has had plastic surgery for the sake of her ever-evolving self-portraits (and whom Gaga admires). Both women are in some ways committing a deliberate bastardization of the feminine ideal. Lady Gaga’s lyrics reveal the same motivation: an upfront, no-apologies-necessary command of her rampant sexuality. She’s a freak bitch, baby.

Even more exciting is Gaga’s stance on feminism. Sadly, it’s a coup if a star even calls herself a feminist in the first place. But Gaga seems to have a very real, personal stake in the claim, according to the L.A. Times:

During nearly two hours of conversation, she not only reiterates her assertion of total originality but also finesses it until it's both a philosophical stance about how constructing a persona from pop-cultural sources can be an expression of a person's truth -- à la those drag queens Gaga sincerely admires -- and a bit of a feminist act.

"I'm getting the sense that you're a little bit of a feminist, like I am, which is good," she said. "I find that men get away with saying a lot in this business, and that women get away with saying very little . . . In my opinion, women need and want someone to look up to that they feel have the full sense of who they are, and says, 'I'm great.'"

And:

Gaga does view her music as a liberating force. "When I say to you, there is nobody like me, and there never was, that is a statement I want every woman to feel and make about themselves," she continued. "I don't make it as a defense. I make it as, OK, guys, it's been two years, and I've made a lot of music, and I know my greatness is individual. And I want every woman to be able to say that.

As if I needed fodder beyond the futuristic, funeral pod-dance that is the "Bad Romance" video to fuel my Gaga love.

Photograph of Lady Gaga by John Shearer/Getty Images for MOCA.

Tags: Cindy Sherman, feminism, L.A. Times, lady gaga

There’s one thing I can say for sure about Annise Parker’s election as Houston's and the nation’s first gay mayor: As my colleague and fellow Texan Sara Mosle noted, the news means a lot more outside my adopted home town than inside. Once again, I’ve had to endure the national media’s shock and awe that we backward Houstonians have done something that would have been considered (almost) the norm in New York or Los Angeles. As Sara noted, we are the fourth-largest city in the United States. Surprise! Houston also has the second-largest gay population in the nation. If you live here, you aren’t so shocked about Parker’s victory—after all, she’s been in public office here for 12 years and never once during that time was in the closet.

I have to say, the race did restore my faith. Or rather, reaffirmed my faith in my adopted hometown. There are a lot of reasons why Parker won, and they have very little to do with her sexual orientation. Anyone who watched the debates knew she not only had more knowledge of the city but was better prepared than her opponents. Parker went to Rice University, and if you live anywhere near the place or have met anyone who went there, you know Rice grads are not only very smart but do not suffer fools. While the other major candidates, African-American corporate attorney Gene Locke and independently wealthy city councilman and architect Peter Brown, blathered and babbled, respectively, city controller Parker not only knew what she was talking about but also showed that she had actually prepared. In other words, she was a girl, and unlike the overconfident boys in the race, she had done her homework. Undoubtedly, this resonated with the Republican soccer moms on the west side. (One of the many mistakes made by Locke, who faced Parker in the runoff, was dissing some of the wealthy, powerful white women the current mayor Bill White had brought to city hall in paid and volunteer positions. They didn’t like him, and they made it known.)

As has frequently been said, Locke also didn’t really have a platform. He was the guy simply anointed by the downtown business interests—the lawyers, bankers, and, most of all, developers who gave us the woefully ineffective Lee Brown when they decided it was time for a black mayor. That didn’t sell so well as a platform to galvanize anyone beyond that small group. Next, they tried law and order —“I will keep Houstonians safe,” Locke said over and over—but the fact is that crime has gone down in Houston, so that didn’t track so well either. Meanwhile, Parker painted Locke—actually a nice, smart guy—as a bumbling city attorney who was in it for the money, while sticking the city with the bill for stadiums we never needed. Further, she ran a good campaign—her people aren’t just loyal, they are fervent, and they are organized—while Locke flailed and never had the black votes needed to guarantee a win in Houston.

The biggest mistake Locke made was allowing two members of his finance committee to give $40,000 to an anti-gay campaign that tainted the runoff with hatred and bigotry. Even though he tried to distance himself from the gay bashing, it wasn’t lost on many Houstonians that Locke was a former civil rights activist himself, and didn’t have any business mucking around in the gutter that way. It might come as a big surprise to outsiders that Houston has no tolerance for intolerance, but if you’ve lived here as long as I have, you see it every day. This is still a big, brawling, wide-open city; people come here from all over the world to do what they want—to realize their dreams, in the best parlance—and as long as you work hard and don’t interfere with anyone else’s, you are allowed to go for it. Parker worked hard, and had proved her competence every which way. The business guys were out of touch and lost the fight because of it.

Tags: Anise Parker, gay mayor, Houston gay mayor

I admittedly can't get enough of Annise Parker, Houston's newly elected, lesbian mayor—partly because it's just so much fun watching the rest of the country be so dumbfounded by my home state. To read the national press, you'd think Rush Limbaugh had suddenly morphed into a liberal. "There's a Gay Mayor of Houston (Yes, Houston, Texas)," marveled The Baltimore Sun in a typical headline. At a time when more liberal states on the coasts (California, Maine, and New York) have rejected gay marriage, it may come as a surprise to many that a place so deep in the heart of Texas could become the biggest city nationwide, and one of only a tiny handful, to elect an openly gay mayor. (Others include Cambridge, MA.) To borrow from the title of a famous Texas political novel, Houston has become "The Gay Place."

While I wouldn't go so far as to say my red state is in danger of slipping into the blue column just yet, contrary to many people's assumptions, Austin is not the only haven for Texas Democrats. Obama actually carried Harris County (which includes most of Houston); more of a shock, he carried Dallas County, too. As Mimi Swartz recently put it, "Being mayor of Houston is more like being mayor of New York than, say, mayor of Austin." Houston is the fourth largest city in the country—behind only New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. As mayor, Parker will govern three times as many people as Sarah Palin ever did as governor of Alaska.

Parker is replacing the extremely popular but term-limited Bill White, who is now running for Texas governor. He is the first Democrat in forever to actually stand a fighting chance of winning (especially if Kay Bailey Hutchison loses the Republican primary to Rick Perry). Sensing the historic opportunity for Democrats, Kinky Friedman gave up his own bid yesterday to help clear the field for White, who must still win the Democratic nomination from Farouk Shami, a West Bank-born hair-care magnate who invented ammonia-free hair color. (Texas, needless to say, is the hair-coloring capital of the world; even so, White is heavily favored to win.) Perry, of course, is the darling of the GOP's conservative base but has far less appeal beyond it. One interesting result from the post-election analysis in Houston is that Annise Parker's winning coalition included a surprisingly large number of Republican women (who, even in Texas, are more tolerant on social issues than their good-old-boy counterparts). This may bode well for White.

I hate Houston's swampy weather, but as a native of Dallas, I sometimes look upon Houston's incomparable assets with envy: Rice, its Ivy League-quality university (which Parker, as it happened, attended) and NASA, its community of reality-based dreamers. In fact, Parker's approach to her new job appears to resemble the space agency's: Yes, she's hoping to reach for the stars but has promised to do it by attending to the city's nuts and bolts. If nothing else, she'll likely be good for business. Empirical evidence shows that cities that welcome diversity (including gays) attract the most creative people and innovative businesses. In this economy, even Houston's good old boys may have reason to cheer.

Tags: Annise Parker, Bill White, gay marriage, Houston, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Kinky Friedman, NASA, Rice University, Rick Perry, Sarah Palin