exercising our rights of free speech...

"The sad part to me is, I thought we were supposed to be able to exercise our rights of free speech," said Emmer. "We're supposed to celebrate the fact that we have different perspectives. And it doesn't seem like that's what this is about. This seems to be more personal and we've got to get over that."

This is a comment by the republican asshat that target just gave 150,000 bucks to in support of his gubernatorial campaign as quoted in an article at TPM. All anyone is doing is exercising their freedom of speech, which isn't limited to just talking. How we spend our money is often one of the loudest ways we can be heard and certainly how the gay community has made the biggest splash politically. target is being stupid. And this fellow? Crying about free speech, really? And really don't whine about people taking things personally and tell us to get over it. Fuck you. This is personal. target is about to find that out.

we the sheeple

I've been letting some of my political rage simmer. It is summertime and I've got a beautiful community of people around to love enjoy the (occasional) sunshine with. But I'm still just as pissed off at all the stupid.

Among the more odious things happening at the moment are these asshole teabaggers trying to shout down townhalls meant to be opportunities to discuss healthcare reform. Over at Talking Points Memo they are doing a great job reporting on this. Shamefully, not so many other news outfits can have the same said of them. They are looking at how this push is being framed in the media, today suggesting that this is likethe Brooks Brothers protests used to disrupt the 2000 recount. I take their point; this is the same monster and some of the same players, but I think we have a more iconic comparison to made. Is it possible to learn of this activity and not think of Animal Farm? Even if you where in this bleating blob, surely you must know that in our game of George Orwell edition if-we-were-who-would-we-be? that these players are the sheep. The stupid, stupid sheep.

the hills: no wonder our enemies hate us

This will sound disingenuous, but I don't normally watch the hills. Everyone says that, because even if you like watching the show it is impossible to not know that it is a horrible thing. Watching it is bad, that it exists is bad, that people produce something like this is bad. I've been unable to justify its existence at all, at least until last night. I may finally be able to make a (feeble) argument in its defense.

SOMEONE made me watch it last night, though I've been told I'm not allowed to tell anyone that he watches it because he is appropriately ashamed of this vile habit, but why would I sit through such torture if I can't make fun of it afterwards? Well, I'm nicer than I look, so I'll let this person remain nameless. Let's call him "Beth". Beth and I had gotten in a squabble and there was that moment where you feel like you've already had all the arguments a couple can manage and that you are doomed to repeat ridiculous gripes forever and ever. In that shortsighted moment, it is easy to blind yourself with all the ways that you and this other person are incompatible and also question whether or not you really are just a jackass. Maybe I'm retarded and don't know how to manage a relationship. Maybe I don't know how to communicate my feelings effectively or listen when someone else is trying to communicate them to me. Maybe we just don't work together...

None of this is true. I know that and even when feeling frustrated facing the picked scab of slow healing old fights, I still know that we've got a real good thing going on. I'm no fatalist and know better than to wallow too deeply or believe that moments of frustration are doomed to be eternal, but it is nice sometimes to have something external to your situation remind you how good you've got it.

When Beth wanted to quit talking and watch the hills, you can (if you have ever met me) imagine the look I shot in his direction. It was somewhere between over-my-dead-body and i-dare-you-to-try. Watching the hills isn't something you should wish on your worst enemy, much less someone you love. Had there been someone else to protect from this blight, I might have stood strong but he made an impassioned plea and I relented.

If you've never seen the hills, don't. It is a bunch of horrible vapid people who do horrible vapid things. Actually, that is being generous: the cast is entirely RealDolls and motorized mannikins. The purported main character, Lauren, almost comes across as human and occasionally says things that make sense. The worst people in the show are heidi and spencer. She is on the show because she is pretty. She looks like she has escaped from the Playboy Mansion and and flounces around with layered blonde extensions and a pouty, perpetually surprised/confused look. And why not? spencer doesn't make any sense. There is no reason he should be on television. She is at least pretty. He is not, and while she isn't particularly likable, her abject idiocy allows for occasional flashes of unintended humor. He isn't even funny. This is the second episode of the show I have ever seen, but just that small snippet leaves an indelible bad taste in the mouth towards this couple and him in particular. In this episode, the two are going through couples counseling. The counselor winces as she listens to their idiocy. heidi is flipping out over a bartender who he flirts with and who is sending him text messages and squares off against this jezebel when she and her brunette gang step to her blonde fembot gang at a club. All of them come across as stupid monkeys dancing in front of a camera, but the brunette wins the round by pointing out that at the end of the day, heidi is still dating a douche bag who hits on other girls and always will.

The other main drama of the show was some awful girl (named "Jayde") with bad collagen injections and a bottle of Jaegermeister acting like an idiot over a dumb boyfriend. But I'm not really here to give a play-by-play recap; I have no desire to recreate this horror. Watching all this absurdity though, suddenly my own relationship seemed incredibly healthy. We get in fights and sometimes silly fights and sometimes the same silly fights over and over, but there is no way either of us is ever going to be that disagreeable. The show's value seems to be in showing what is purported to be a fabulous life (glamor, parties, clothes, etc.) and making it look like the worst hell imaginable. And not even a fun sort of wretched hell. Lost occasionally looks like hell, being stuck on some time-travel island with an atomic bomb and people trying to kill you and your friends, but it is an interesting dynamic hell. The hell that is the hills just looks so painfully boring. They make leisure and money look awful.

And then there is what they do for relationships. If they make hanging out in bars look painful, they make dating look like pure torture (and not the waterboarding kind, but the ripping-off-fingernails-with-pliers kind). Sitting watching these... people(?) after having my own spat suddenly made me appreciate what I've got. We (like every couple) come up with some stupid things to fight about, but contrast against this alternate universe displayed in the hills we suddenly seem remarkably sane and stable. And there was a certain vicious catharsis to answering "Yes," when asked by Beth if he sounded like a particularly awful character as she picked a pointless fight. Having this televised nightmare to remind me how beautiful -even if occasionally frustrating- my reality is made the night a little easier, but I'd still rather it just didn't exist.

I would have still felt sour about the experience of being subjected to the show had we not followed it with the current episode of Family Guy, which spoofs the hills. Family Guy treated it with all the delicacy and tenderness that it treats any subject. If watching the hills made me feel better about my own small social sphere, it made me cringe for humanity in general. If this is a hit show, if people in droves are choosing to watch this eagerly, how can one have faith in our fellow man? Looking around the world today, it is easy to bump up against these terrifying dilemmas ("How can people do such horrible things?"), but then Family Guy dives in to save us. The brutal satire reminded the self-important jerk inside me that perhaps my negative reaction to the hills is the point. The show is done in arch seriousness, but everyone watching is in on the joke: no one watches it thinking these are likable people. Some are more likable than others, but all of them are kind of walking caricatures of our pop-generic obsessions and desires. Family Guy reminds that we all know this beast is absurd, that even Lauren Conrad is in on the joke, voicing herself as a character in the episode even as they present her as dating a (literal) dog (culminating with a scene of her dragging her ass around on a rug after Brian gives her worms) and lampooning the emptiness of the show.

In the end, rather than ruining my night and deepening our divide and prolonging our disagreement, the hills (I am still not going to capitalize it) actually salved the wound and gave us a common horror to be happy we weren't a part of. This isn't to say I plan on watching it again or that I don't think it should be cancelled, but you know me: always looking on the bright side.

The Purpose Driven Tripe

I'm back from the provinces, however temporarily. Much to write about and hard to decide where to start, but before I scramble through a backlog of impressions from Alaska and crab fishing, I'm struck by an annoying bit of news that keeps popping up in headlines and irritating the shit out of me (and what is this blog for if not for griping about current events?).

It seems that richard warren is to give the invocation at Obama's inauguration. I suppose that there are more toxic religious figures out there. It could be worse, much worse, but I have to register how much this decision irritates me. Why him? Why did they have that stupid thing at his bloated church before? Because he sells a lot of books? His books are stupid. My mother sent me The Purpose Filled Life back when it first came out and I tried to read it. I wanted to like it is theory, but it just isn't very good. The writing is crap and the ideas are vapid. And he's anything but a biblical scholar. It is just feel good crap for dumb middle class people not quite happy enough with all their excess who want a religious leader to give them a quick fix to feeling better about their lives. I read for a few days (it is a daily devotional guide) and then flipped through looking for anything that suggested it shouldn't be shelved then dropped it. When I admitted to Mom that I thought it was crap, she admitted that she had also found it kind of useless and quit reading after a few days.

I'm not the most religious fellow these days, but I'm pretty fierce about it when I've got to deal with it. I appreciate the desire to find and feel magic and the supernatural in everyday life (and that is exactly what religion at its best is about), but most of these modern bullshit artist peddling god for mass consumption and easy digestion kill all that with their assembly line vacuum packing of the Word. I was a uptight religious nerd in an earlier incarnation and read and poured through the Bible nightly, seeking and analyzing and praying and meditating. And I thankfully made my way out someone intact and avoided the looney bin that would be the likely end point of my trajectory had I gone to these false prophets and snake-oil peddlers instead of straight to the text. And even that would have likely left me mentally crippled had I not had people to challenge the popular interpretations and assumptions and force me to also find the Word scattered as it is through so much other text. All of this is just to say that having invested so much time in this subject matter I'm not inclined to be particularly generous to folks who condescend on it and proceed to talk out of their ass.

People are going on about mr. warren's support for prop 8 and of course that pisses me off. All his idiot blather about "a five-thousand year old definition" and crap about every culture having the same definition of marriage as between one man and one woman... has he even read the Bible? The definition of marriage changes through out the Bible and even if it doesn't endorse same sex relationships (other than David and Jonathan's love for one another), it certainly explicitly endorses polygamous marriages. I'm not so concerned that he is just one more homophobic prick (who, irritatingly says, "I'm not homophobic; be nice to gay people," right after saying vote to make the law say we are lesser citizens), but rather that he just isn't much of a religious leader. He is apparently effective and people seem to eat it up, but what the man may have in organization, he lacks in charisma. Billy Graham is a rock star; even if you disagree with the man, there is no denying that he has that umph. If we've got to have a religious invocation, could we at least have someone dynamic instead of some fat mega-church fool?

Most of religous leaders (at least on the national level) in this country are idiots. And so are most of their followers. Surely though, there is someone else? I suppose it is only fair, this guy gave Obama something of a fair shake and leveraged his visibility into an opportunity to reach out to evangelicals, so I can't say that it doesn't make some kind of sense. But it is still a dissappointment; it is a failure, if not of standards, then certainly of style.

Back the fuck off and leave Toby Keith alone...

This morning I've been texting back and forth with Kearney, whose job is apparently more boring than usual today or maybe he is just feeling chatty. Inbetween laughing at jerry falwell's fortune being squandered by him before he left this world to reap his eternal reward and feeling slightly gross for finding ourselves kind of totally loving Paris Hilton, we found time to comment on the election. He comments on the latest polls, saying it is going to be an uphill battle. I say duh, all the boomers are about to face the deep down racism that they like to believe they don't have when they find themselves choosing between a pathetic candidate and a black candidate.

Why in the hell am I sharing my boring text conversation with you? Because it is a funny backdrop for the rant that is about to follow. I think plenty of people are way more racist than they would like to believe. I think there is sub-conscious racism scattered all throughout this campaign and people are uncomfortable having to confront it. Nobody (except perhaps my father who read mccain's book 8 years ago and has refrained from updating his opinion of him since) actually wants to vote for john mccain. In Alabama this last weekend, my crazily conservative uncle confided that he and his internet political buddies all feel like they will have to hold their noses to vote for him. To say that the republican base is the opposite of energized is an understatement. So why will this be an uphill battle? Because the energizing rock star candidate is a black man and this makes an awful lot of Americans seriously uncomfortable. I'll happily argue that in general, America is more progressive about racial issues than almost anywhere on the planet. That said, I'm more saying that most people on the planet are more bigoted than they'd like to admit than that we are all roses and sunshine. We've got our racial issues in spades, and we are being confronted with that in an unignorable way now.

But, as the title suggest, despite having wanting to chew on these issues in text for a while now, it isn't what I've sat down to tangle with today. Or maybe that is exactly what I'm sitting down to talk about. Let's dive right in...

I followed a link to an article on Huffington Post, and in the side bar I saw a link to another Huffpo piece: max blumenthal griping about Toby Keith saying some black people might say that Obama acts white. Seems mr. blumenthal already had his panties in a wad over Toby Keith's song/upcoming movie "Beer For My Horses". Why, after reflecting that this election, despite having the strongest Democratic candidate in many years, is going to be a hard one to win because that candidate happens to be black, am I going to slam someone else for crying "RACISM!!!!"? Because he is being an idiotic dumb ass.

I thought I had written a similar diatribe in the past, but looking back through my archive, I can't find it, so here goes nothing. mr. blumenthal is the unfortunate victim of built up vitriol over people ignorantly stereotyping Toby Keith. So sure, he is the human equivalent of a bright yellow, double-axle, extended cab, monster truck, but he isn't the right wing moron that some people assume he is. Yes, he wrote that 'boot-in-the-ass' song that was played every three minutes for the year following 9/11. He wrote that song originally just for an audience of enlisted men heading off to Afghanistan, but it was catchy and it made it on his album and on the radio and won the hearts of right wing chickenhawk douchetards from sea to shining sea. And it became an anthem for blood thirsty furor that bush and friends rode us off to Iraq on. So I understand getting tired of that song, of the radios playing it all the time, of the assholes it ended up bolstering. Because it went from being a song for the troops to a song for people who wanted the excitement of war without any sacrifice, but it wasn't Mr. Keith who took it there.

He supported the assault in Afghanistan, but not the invasion of Iraq. He's not perfect but when you listen to him discuss things, he doesn't come across as an ignorant idiot. Country and a little crude at time, but then again, so am I, and I still get the feeling that he thinks about things before he comments and isn't just pushing anyone else's talking points or echoing whatever ignorant things some other doofus comes up with.

So having thought this for a long while as I watch lazy blogger after lazy blogger rant about how right wing Toby Keith is over the last few years, today I stumble across max b. screaming bloody murder over him saying that some black people might comment that Barack Obama is able to be in the position he is in because he acts white. Why in the hell is that a controversial statement? Plenty of black people do complain that he acts white. And he is a viable national candidate because he comes across, if not white, at least somewhat racially neutral. Ignoring all this doesn't mean you aren't racist, it means you aren't willing to look clearly in the face of racial issues. That people would rather not have to deal with racial issues doesn't make them go away, doesn't mean they aren't there. Which is exactly the point Toby Keith makes in that radio segment that got blumenthal all itchy:

GLENN: Today, the house hasn't been working on you know like finding energy or oil or anything else. Yesterday they decided and debated and finally passed a resolution to apologize for slavery.


TOBY: You know what? It's if it's never been done before, then I think everybody apologizes for that.


GLENN: I mean, why, but isn't that common sense?


TOBY: Yeah, it is.


GLENN: I don't know a single soul that is, like, oh, slavery. If we just had a few slaves. I don't know anybody that's like that.


TOBY: Yeah.


GLENN: And anybody who would be like that, we can, you know, take care of them by just saying, hey, talk a little louder because you're a freak.


TOBY: Well, we definitely need to move past it, because it's something that I see that never changes. It racial issues just never ever seem to change. We can't get past them. And so I really don't know what the answer is.


GLENN: Wait a minute. Hang on a second. Haven't we gotten past it. Isn't Barack Obama possibly the next president of the United States and you don't see people, you know, saying, oh, he's black. I don't know any of those people. I'm sure they exist, but I don't know those people. Don't you think that shows that, I mean, look at the great distance we've come in just the last 20 years.


TOBY: Okay, but, also, I think that the black people would say, he don't talk, act, or care railway himself as a black person.


GLENN: What does that even mean?


TOBY: I don't know what that means, I'm saying that's what I think that they would say. Even though the the black society would pull for him, I still think that they think in the back of their mind that the only reason that he is in is because he talks, acts and carries himself as a Caucasian, but I think he's got a I think him and McCain are the two best choices, in my opinion, that we've had in years.


Saying that we need to move past racial issues is not the same thing as trying to ignore them or pretend that they are all solved. They aren't and kudos to Mr. Keith for refusing to play along with beck's attempt to brush them under the rug.

"Nobody likes slavery and a black man can run for high public office. See? We aren't racist anymore." This is the kind of dumbassed rose colored shit that gets useful public debate about race stuck in the muck. It is the silencing of discussion of it that helps keep it alive and kicking more than people who aren't delicate about how they talk about it. This goes hand in hand with what max blumenthal is doing here: reducing racism to a list of verboten subjects that make you racist if you don't approach them in the approved way so if you avoid those, then you aren't racist. "You sing about lynching, so it is obviously about lynching black people, you racist!" Is lynching a loaded subject in America? Hell fucking yes! Last year when a friend who works for a music label was talking to me about them considering trying to bring a song across the pond from England that was basically a fuck-em-all drinking song referencing all manner of omnipresent pop cultural/political crap then suggesting to "string 'em up", I pointed out that the song might not translate so well over here because of the unavoidable racial connotations.

I don't mind people saying that "Beer For My Horses" should raise some eyebrows or trying to discuss what nerves it hits. Discuss it, argue about it, but don't try and use it as an excuse to whack a singer over the head with a blunt object for having a song about it. Our country has long celebrated vigilante justice and half of our movies are about those who slip between the fingers of the law getting their just desserts in the end from someone who steps outside the restrictions that the law puts on our police and judicial system. Right now the biggest blockbuster of all times is selling out across the country with exactly that story, so don't get all high and mighty about someone singing the same damn thing in a song.

It is funny and in ways thereputic for me to be writing this now. When I first heard the song(it has been out for a long time now), I cringed. Exactly because lynching has racial connotations in American, particularly in the South. And a little bit because I didn't think it is really one of his best songs and I'd rather hear Willie Nelson duet with him on a better song. I don't like mythologizing the good-old-days and have no illusions about how people's bigotries find ways to seep out between the words that they say. God knows I've written about it before. But also listening to the song, I found that the racial baggage that I found there was what I brought with me, and came away feeling that if we wanted to place his song about stringing people up in its appropriate context that it comes from our treasured American Wild West cowboy mythology. How ever much it may conjure up our wounds from racially driven lynchings I don't think that is the intent behind it, so it is irritating to see the suggestion that Toby Keith is a racist for singing this song beaten into the ground. I'll argue that such revenge fantasies have been particularly appealing to certain breed of whiney-ass-titty-baby types whose perpetual fear of discomfort keep rush limbaugh and sean hannity and bill o'reilly in business and that stoking these flames was useful for bush et al, but don't try to act like this one is particularly potent or dangerous.

max's whining was particularly irritating because of his dumb swipes at Toby's musical prowess and real country cred. I'll be the first to gripe that much of 'Today's Hottest Country' is vapid as shit and worthless, but Toby Keith? He is easily one of the best song writers in Nashville and has one of the most powerful and beautiful voices of any male country artist alive. Sure, he most often pumps out fun honkey tonk anthems with catchy hooks, but even these songs are usually beautifully written. The argument that he isn't country is just stupid and gratutitous. And the "At his best, Keith is Merle Haggard with a lobotomy," comment... do a detect a little side swipe at Mr. Haggard? You better step back! Swing around your country music realness with with your hyperlinks for some country icons and alt-country darlings and have a shout out for your friend if it makes you feel more legit, but don't try to slam the man who penned and sang "I Should Have Been a Cowboy" and "A Little Less Talk and Alot More Action" as not country and think you don't come across as a country music tourist at best. Some of his songs are dumb and annoying, but the man's plenty fucking talented and 'country'.

Anyway, can we discuss touchy subjects like race openly with eyes wide open and not either try to declare it all fixed and hunky-dory or squeal like a stuck pig anytime anyone does anything which reminds us that we've got racial baggage in this country? Please?