Kate - my mom is straight up crazy, but you seem like a really great mother, andI don't know anything about you, really, but I hope I can be supportive and a part of my kids' lives without being weird about it, like you seem to be on this blog. Kelly, give your mom a big hug for me.
Hey Kelly: before we are scattered to the four winds to wander lost and alone in a barren wilderness, can we get T shirts? Like Joe is wearing? Or can someone with better life skills than me have them made and let us know a place we can order them? To clothe and protect us from the bitter cold of a dying world? Thx.
I stopped posting a while back, because of time, but I never stopped reading and laughing at the comments. I somehow found this site reading recaps of True Blood, which were hysterical, and kept reading. I'm an old, and this site has given me faith that despite the fact that much of internet culture is horrible (i.e., trolling, public wedding proposals), there is a subculture (you all) of informed, cynical but not too cynical, thoughtful and funny people. Thanks.
No, no. Lind's point is exactly that: they're motivated by race, and are in fact racists. They're just not toothless rednecks, though, but many of them are educated and wealthy. Maybe I'm preaching to the choir, but it's important to note that the Tea Party is not about "small government," or "individual liberty" and their leaders don't really believe it is, any more than the white southern plantation owners thought the civil war was about "states rights." It's purely about preserving white privilege, and they know that. Of course that makes them evil, but it doesn't mean their tactics are stupid. If you're a committed racist, it makes more sense to get involved in local politics and jerrymander districts, and gather enough mass to hold federal governement hostage, than it does to join some trailer park klan klub.
But you're right about the pinhead thing. I'm a total pinhead.
Seriousgum for a second -- The Daniel Goleman NYT article is interesting particularly in relation to a piece on Slate.com today by Michael Lind, about how people misunderstand who the Tea Party is. According to Lind, they're not ignorant buffoons, but are above average in eductation and wealth, and are leaders in their communities ("the local notables," "lords of the local car dealership, country club and chamber of commerce.") It's important to understand that they're motivated by the diminishing power of white local wealth in the face of demographic changes, and are struggling to hold on to it by dismantelling federal gov't., just as they did after the civil war, etc.. They very much do not care about poor folks, or brown folks, and are acting rationally to protect what they see as their self interest.
But casual racism does need to be called out, even when its by bumbling, tone deaf people, because, as Gabe pointed out, many white people don't think about white privilege and historical context. The old argument about the Confederate Flag being about "tradition" for white people and not about race is an example. The "tradition" they're talking about is slavery. And white people, for whatever reason, do indeed need to be reminded that racism is the water they swim in, the air they breathe, and does have real effects on peoples lives. (i.e., black woman standing her ground with a gun is sentenced to 20 years, Zimmerman gets off).
Maybe if a baby read it, this poem wouldn't freak me out so much/seem so constantly, terrifyingly relevant:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Looks like Kelly has joined Gabe now on the front lines of polticsgum. Gabe, Santorum totally understands if that makes you feel confused and protective but also kind of turned on. You should probably fire her.
Can we get a little deconstruction of that Osama zombie movie? I thought Gabe was joking when he mentioned Osama, but that shows how much I know. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but doesn't turning him into a silly zombie kind of demean the real horror of 9/11? Maybe that's what pop culture does, (Captain America and Red Skull, etc.) but this seems particularly weird and jarring. Just me?
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