You have to have grown up in this sinkhole of a state to truly appreciate the suppurating glory in seeing your pus-faced governor seized, apparently from his bed, before he can “sell” the vacant senate seat of the President-Elect, all reported by a bankrupt newspaper."
this song gives me the chills. the kind of chills that i get when i hear my mom recount exactly where she was and what she was doing when jfk was assassinated, or when the space shuttle challenger exploded. i wasn't around then; and i worry about the future, when now is then. i worry that in the years to come, i will have a tragedy to recall to my children. i know it's a morose thought, and i shouldn't think about it. but i do. from shouting out that obama is a "terrorist" or hollering "kill him" at a rally when obama's name is mentioned, to telling an african-american member of the press corps to "sit down, boy," there's a lot of ugly shit around this year that makes purple band-aids and flip-flops look like thoughtful political discourse.
on the one hand, this shit fucking sucks. this is the land of the free and the home of the brave and we're supposedly proud to be an american[s] from sea to shining sea and yet, 232 years after the founding of this country, 219 years after the signing of our constitution, 145 years after the signing of the emancipation proclamation, 143 years after the ratification of the 13th amendment to the constitution eliminated slavery, 140 years after the ratification of the 14th amendment gave african-americans equal protection under the law, 138 years after the ratification of the 15th amendment prohibited states from abridging the rights of citizens to vote because of their race, 132 years after the first of the jim crow laws abrogated the work that the constitutional amendments started and 44 years after the civil rights act supposedly put to rest any remaining doubts about what would be legal and what should not be acceptable in this fucking country, we've still got people who think that they are better than other people because of melanin content in their skin.
and, what's even more horrifying, that they think they can openly say racist shit because being at a republican rally means that they are among "their" kind. and, given that neither john mccain nor sarah palin, who both happen to belong to the same party as abraham motherfucking lincoln, could take a second to chide a supporter and say, "that language has no place in this party," they might be right. this is what nixon wrought on this country and his party, this is what rovian politics brings. there's no courage in ignoring who your supporters are. there's no honor in taking their votes if you can't take a minute to chide them for their racism. there would be honor and there would be courage in saying, "if you are voting for us because obama is black, or because you think he is muslim, we don't want your votes. vote for us on the issues, or don't vote for us at all." but john mccain and sarah palin will take their support and their attendance at rallies with a wink and a well-coiffed nod and everyone will pretend that they didn't hear what was said and the racists will think they have someone who agrees with them in the white house and the rest of us will march happily on by like little lemmings and believe, as we want to believe, that they don't.
and on the other hand, if enough of those people come out of their noose-festooned closets wearing their confederate decorated clothing and quit talking about how the 'flag of intolerance' is some sort of states' rights-southern pride bullshit and acknowledge that it is about racism, showing their non-running red-white-and-blueblood for what it is, maybe i can stop hearing about how calling obama "articulate" isn't really racist and calling him "young man" isn't really calling him "boy" and calling michelle "angry" isn't playing into stereotypes because the people that want to turn a blind eye to the kind of underlying racism that pervades too much of our actions in this country won't be able to be willfully blind anymore. i understand that lots of people grew up with parents who preached tolerance and in environments that encouraged tolerance and lead (one might be tempted to say "sheltered") lives in which racism has never touched their lives in a way that they've seen or been able or willing to acknowledge, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. and if the racists hiding among us — the person who wrote "nigger" under a sharpie-markered swastika on a locker in jock hall in my high school, for instance, or the woman who told the afl-cio treasurer that she's not voting for obama "because of his race" — have to come out and say it, then the rest of us have to acknowledge that it exists and that 44 years, and 138 years, and 140 years, and 143 years and 145 years hasn't been enough to wipe the stains of slavery from our country's soul or racism from its consciousness. and maybe once we recognize that as a country, once we acknowledge that the evil of racism walks amongst not just the worst of us, but some of the best of us, maybe then, and only then, we can figure out why 150 years isn't enough.
in reference to the kkk comment that i made in the previous post:
"Organizers conceived of this convention as a means to inspire, but some African American Republicans have found the Xcel Energy Center depressing this week. Everywhere they look, they see evidence of what they consider one of their party's biggest shortcomings. As the country rapidly diversifies, Republicans are presenting a convention that is almost entirely white.
Only 36 of the 2,380 delegates seated on the convention floor are black, the lowest number since the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies began tracking diversity at political conventions 40 years ago. Each night, the overwhelmingly white audience watches a series of white politicians step to the lectern—a visual reminder that no black Republican has served as a governor, U.S. senator or U.S. House member in the past six years."
so i'm not sure if you're anything like me, but being the 'off the cuff cuisine' chef that i am, i try not to let anything go to waste. you know, when you bring home some bk or mickey d's, and after consuming your poor excuse for food, have ketchup packets or sauce shots left over that you throw in the door and forget about. same goes for chinese food, and you know they always give you enough sauce to put out a fire at the pentagon with your order. you throw them in your refrigerator door and forget about them. then one day you're trying to impress some last minute guests that have decided to stay at your place for dinner and all you have in your 'gourmet' kitchen are some ramen noodles, frozen veggies and some leftover grilled chicken from last weekend's cookout. the makings of a superb, on-the-fly stirfry. but wait, OH SHIT!, how are you going to make a sauce for your stirfry with no sauce? you look in the fridge and all you see is a bottle of ketchup, french's mustard (i use the term mustard loosely when describing french's), and a jar of pickle juice. oh no, what to do, what to do. then you bust open the butter holder, that invariably has never seen a stick of butter in it's life, and VOILA! soy sauce, duck sauce, hot mustard! packets, but instant chinkychow sauce nonetheless! each one of those packets, collected over time, came from a meal, inevitably eaten over conversation, an argument or during a lone lunch of self-reflection, came from a time and place in the past. as are our lessons learned. we learn through the years how to cope, how to inspire, how to teach, and how to live. we don't always remember those lessons, as we throw condiment packets in the fridge we throw life-lessons into the back of our heads, until one day we find ourself in a situation where it becomes relevant and we pull them from the back of our minds as to not waste the advice and lessons of the past. the moral of this story, and the linking of it to my blog- our life experiences are our 'soy sauce packets,' our hidden links to our experiences of our past...
e·piph·a·ny - noun - a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience. [www.dictionary.com]
the epiphanies that we experience in life, questions or situations that we find ourselves in, and don't know how to resolve, can most often be solved my raking our brains in search of a 'soy sauce packet.' an answer to a question. a solution to a problem. and so this, this blog, is simply an ever-expanding culmination of soy sauce packets in my butter box, and the epiphanies that have helped to make room for more butter in my fridge...
this song gives me the chills. the kind of chills that i get when i hear my mom recount exactly where she was and what she was doing when jfk was assassinated, or when the space shuttle challenger exploded. i wasn't around then; and i worry about the future, when now is then. i worry that in the years to come, i will have a tragedy to recall to my children. i know it's a morose thought, and i shouldn't think about it. but i do. from shouting out that obama is a "terrorist" or hollering "kill him" at a rally when obama's name is mentioned, to telling an african-american member of the press corps to "sit down, boy," there's a lot of ugly shit around this year that makes purple band-aids and flip-flops look like thoughtful political discourse.
in reference to the kkk comment that i made in the previous post:
