Better seen than Heard, at least to the McCain campaign

Some thought that David Letterman went a little too far last night in his excoriation of McCain. I personally think Ol' Dave is completely fed up with the Republican party, even "war hero" McCain and went as far as he possibly could in his show to demonstrate just how incompetent this Republican ticket is.

The Vid is at Crooks and Liars. I'll link it later, got to get the girls to school.

UPDATE: The always excellent SadButTrue has the vid and more

I thought it was brilliant, especially the way he framed it. Dave is a master at dealing with the Mainstream semi-buffoon average American audience.

I didn't think Letterman was being sexist, but I could be wrong. I believe Letterman was playing a subtle double point from a different direction- that it's McCain who is being sexist, by not allowing Palin to stand in for him while he goes off to, uh, save Washington- And by the same token, Palin, is not considered "ready" by McCain himself to even run her own portion of the campaign.

The Republican party itself is delegating Palin to a simple symbolic position- that of a Pretty tough woman, in fact the perfect woman for Republicans. One that is seen more than she is heard.

And dealing with the 90% McCain following here in West Texas, I have to tell you- that's all these people want. They Love their Caribou Barbie. They don't need anything more than that simple image. They don't want to know anything more than that. The more she talks about Policy the less they'll like her, Which, incidentally- is exactly the same story with McCain. They've already made their minds up- Republican party over America. They will put focus on Muslim-Black-High Taxes! and ignore everything else on purpose. America, the stupid, is more apparent now than ever before.

Racism trumps Sexism in this case, I'm afraid, or do you think that the Republican party would have put a black man on their ticket to Combat Hillary if she had beat out Obama?

Sitting in the middle of Racist Republican Redneckistan, I don't think so.

Framing The "Debate"

A friend called me early this morning. He's a default Texas John McCain supporter, which means : He won't vote for no split tail or no negro, by God.

A day before I had ripped McCain to this Truck Driver- and explained why he should be voting Democrat for the rest of his natural born life, apparently, 24 hours set in and he forgot the fifteen damn factors I had instilled in him via reason, logic, and historical example.

He called me from his cell as he was truckin along, and he asked me if I was still supporting Obama. Before I could answer, he followed up with : "Have you seen the news?" - Now, I am a news JUNKIE. I mainline C&L, I shoot MSNBC Straight, I chase it with NPR Radio , and while I'm at it, I have a slice of Yahoo and smoke a bowl of CNBC. And I wash it all down with a suicide of various blogs. So, sitting down at my desk that early morning, I hadn't even booted up my PC yet. All I had was my morning drive with NPR's tibetan updates.

I thought- 'Well, shit! what did I miss?'

"Obama got a terrorist working for him.Yep, it's all over the news!" He exclaimed.

Unawares of what the heck he was talking about, I kinda mumbled- "I didn't see that on the news" But nonplussed, I followed up with the standard West Texas talking point- "Well, hell, Rocky, I'll still vote for a terrorist over Hillary or McCain". That got a chuckle.

"Well, I just thought you should know that's what I heard. That your boy got terrorists working for him."

He couldn't cite a news agency or details, and he had to go abruptly. I quickly got online, thinking to myself- What-in-the-fck-now?

Unsurprisingly it dawned on me that there was no news concerning this soundbite. I had forgotten that the rest of the country isn't quite up to speed on current events. Maybe he had finally heard some shit about Madrassas. Maybe he had heard about Weather Underground. Maybe he heard some uppity black preacher was badmouthing the flag. But whatever bullshit he took in one ear, didn't quite make it out the other.

All that careful conversation I had with him the day before, meant nothing now. All he heard was that I was supporting a black man over the white one. And although he listened carefully and even told me what a sorrry ass Bush was, worst President ever- a day later all that registered was that crazy ass nigga's middle name was Hu-saaaaannnnne and he won't say the pledge of allegiance by damn!

...

He wants to vote Republican. Because he's been told to. But everything is shit and it has been for the past 8 years. Nothing has quite worked out like the Republican party told him it would. He just don't know. But ho-shit- It's not just a split-tail running for President, that's a god-damn Clinton! By Jesus, He'd take a bj in an outhouse with his wife holding a roll of toilet paper outside, but he cain't abide the Preznit getting his jollies in the oval office!

Not if he's damn democrat, at least! And then the other option is a half-breed! And half breeds ain't so bad, Hell this guy's grandson is a "half-breed". But this fucker is half (whisper- BLACK! whisper)

Sumbitch!

McCain is a white guy and hell he's even a War Hero. (If it all it takes to be a war hero is to be captured by a rice farmer in a paddy where you've been bombing civiilians)... So when he hears "Hussein" or "Farrakhan" or "black President" his mind is made up.

The wit and wisdom, the facts and the figures, the history and the truth isn't going to sway him.

UNLESS...

So, what I propose- is to fight like a dirty, piece of shit Republican. Do what they have done to Obama and to Hillary before him- Make up a bunch of bullshit and pass it down the line. Who knows? Knowing the Middle Amerkan dipshit like I know so well, they will PROBABLY improve on it as it goes in one ear and out their ass.

I'm sure you've heard some dirt on McCain. Well, do what THEY do, and just assume its true and pass it around. But frame it in the worst possible way to Right wingers and their ilk; Make a headline about McCain. Say that you heard it from a "reputable source" and let that fucker fly. We are dealing with idiots, slaves, and sycophants. For four years of blogging, I've laid out the truth in careful little lines only to be ignored by morons who want to know who's Britney's Sister's Baby's Daddy is.

FUCK THEM.

McCain wants to Double the Estate Tax! I read it in the Wall Street Journal!

McCain owns interest in a Chinese Nuclear Weapons facility! It was on FoxNews!

McCain called one of Mitt Romney's three wives' (the thirteen year old) a bitch! I heard it on Rush!

McCain beat his ex-wife as she lay in a cancer ward, then had sex with his mistress in the same room as she lay bleeding afterwards! it was on Drudge, I Swear!

McCain wants Cheney as his Vice President! (that might be true)

Rove threatens to blow the whistle on McCain's Bondage Affair with Condi Rice, her lesbian girlfriend and Jeff Gannon! I read it at Free Republic!

McCain secretly vows to George Bush in a satanic blood brother ritual that they will do a 9-11 in every major city until the Democrat party is no longer a majority in Congress! I saw it on Perez Hilton!

Because the horrible truth is- THESE Lies are more likely to get attention than Bush okaying Torture, Blackwater pulling guns on American soldiers with no consequences, Iraq going to hell in a handbasket, our President funneling millions of dollars in weapons to Saudi Arabia and Israel, our government allowing crooked corporations to loot American stockholders, or our military being destroyed by the Incompetent Republican leadership.

So lie all you want. The truth is far worse.

Absolut-ly ridiculoso

Absolut ad offends non-Mexicans

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It's kind of stupid to me. Sort of like Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants fighting over which branch of christianity is the 'true' religion for Eire.

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Newsflash- In an Absolut America, we wouldn't have Spanish Conquistadors OR English Colonists fighting over who stole the land first.

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Christians: Whether they speak Spanish or English, the heirs to Jewish mythology are the biggest Thieve's Guild in human history.

The Speech

It takes someone who is both white and black to be 100% credible to Americans when speaking like this. I can't say I've ever heard anything like this from a politician before. It was just ... truth. Unglossed and laid bare- just simple truth about the race divide and how to get past it. I know there are those of you who think he threw his grandma under the bus , and then there are those who think he threw Rev. Wright under the bus. I don't believe in moving towards the right, making concessions with those who have outright ruined so much in the past few years. But, when it comes to race, we can all stand to move a little closer together. This speech did that for me, and apparently quite a few others.

The Speech

Reactions:

at Ice Station Tango

at Crooks and Liars

Ornery Bastard

Yakety Yak

The Poor Man Institute

Morning Martini

It's hard to pick just one piece out of this very important and candid talk about race by Obama. Read the whole thing, please.

EXCERPT:
For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle - as we did in the OJ trial - or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the Emergency Room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care; who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.
This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life. This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag. We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

I would not be running for President if I didn't believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country. This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation - the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election.

Coming out of the woodwork

And I thought I was the only one...

Found through The Alien Trucker

I felt like that little girl in a bee costume

Cept with better Tejas muzak...



More about the - ahem -ever less reclusive Redneck Liberals out there...

I found a book (Liberal Rednecks Read!Yeehaw!)

In it, they describe the Conservative Redneck-

ill-dressed, surly... unintelligent and slinking... the sort of people that lynch Negroes, that mistake hoodlumism for wit, and cunning for intelligence, that attend revivals and fight and fornicate in the bushes afterwards. They were undiluted Anglo-Saxons. They were the sovereign voter.

Sounds 'bout right... at first flush. But with a second look, I do take exception at several things-

Making fun of the way rednecks dress is pretty elitist. They were poor and hard working. What little clothing they had was stained with the evidence of their labors. Putting food on the table came in way above "How do I look?" in prioritization. And they were not lackin' in intelligence so much as they were in education. The things that the affluent take for granted often reveal their innate bias. "Just look at them. You can tell they have no breeding." No, what they didn't have, that the "well-bred" did- was bread.

The description in italics above reminds me of how average whites often look down on black folks. The "slinking" bit in itself is particularly damning. Shit, when you are poor, grew up poor, and have been raised busting your ass and having the notion kicked into you every single day that those who had money were better than you- "slinking" sort of came natural. You weren't allowed to look a man with money in the eye. That was arrogance and jealousy, don't you know.

If that description is apt- concerning poor black people and poor white people alike- well, it seems to me that you can take the color description right out of it. Why, to the well-to-do, we are all ni**ers, that is of a certainty.

Another question comes up, in light of this - Why does the racism even get worse, louder, and more obvious, as you go down the financial food chain of white men?

Several reasons. The desire to be one of "You" the affluent- made us disregard what we had in common with the black working class and strive to adopt your own prejudices against them as mimicry. Another- was the fact that our community, within the poorest of the poor, was in direct competition with the black families. If you hired one of us, we tried to get you to hire others in our family, our extended family. Every job, every dollar that a black man got instead of one of us was one we didnt get. And vice versa.

And finally, a big driving factor was shame. We were told that blacks were less than whites. We were told by our "masters" that whites were better. We were told that is why whites ran everything. And deep inside, faced with this line of thought, we asked ourselves- how did we, white that we were, end up poor like just another black man? How worse were we, white people who were no better than our black neighbors? We were told we were innately supposed to be in a higher echelon. Yet here we were- all at the bottom. No matter what our color.

And that just couldn't be right. The rich said so. So We poor whites couldnt be at the same level as the poor blacks. It was impossible! So, armed with the knowledge of our 'betters'- we decided that the blacks must be cheating us, must be stealing from us, must be tricking us, to 'drag us down' to the same level.

And how could we prove that we were above them? The only way we could. We put them in their place. "Shit rolls downhill". We took out our misplaced anger on the black people. We pushed, we insulted, we degraded, we killed. We made sure they understood the "difference" between a poor white man and a poor black man. Which was- that our rich masters exonerated us of our crimes. They used us and rewarded us for our dirty deeds. After all, poor or not, we were still white. But, at the end of the day, our color didn't really matter to the rich, after all. We still were poor dirty white trash- must be because we were lazy and stupid. White or not, we were still subhumans to those "god had rewarded" with the benefit of good birth and good family.

This ain't no excuse for our actions. In fact, it's the opposite. It's a conviction of our ignorance. We WERE ignorant fools and in our ignorance we allowed ourselves to be divided and conquered once again.

But some of us woke up.

Some of us finally figured out we had more in common with the black man than we did the rich man.

And a redneck liberal was born.

"And if that ain't country, I'll kiss your ass"

Okay, that's all I got for now... Thoughts? This is more emotion writing for me than it is conscious thought. But its how I see things. I could be wrong.

Back to the music- On a ZZ Top kick right now...




Love the older bluesy stuff..

My Favorite late-night-hand-me-the-last-beer-and-by-the-way-shut-the-hell-up-so-I-can-hear-the-music song... (Number 136 on the Jukebox at the Sand trap...)



And with that, I think I'll call it a night.

Speaking the "Wrong" Language

Hat tip : to Daithi' of The Gaelic Starover and this post:
Ní Bheidhmid inár dTost

This blog is in response to the two or three emails I get every damn week from some of my fellow whitefolks about how bad it is that some people speak Spanish in America (the Horror!)

A little more insight on "Language Rights" from a completely different perspective can be gained from reading the Celtic League article linked below. Looking at Ireland and the sectarian strife instigated by the argument for English only speaking there may perhaps open the eyes of the anti-Mexican crowd.

Celtic League article

In Ireland, an Irish teacher was arrested for speaking Gaelic instead of "the Queen's English". Maybe you are well-versed in the situation in Ireland, maybe you are not- But either way, that story says a lot about how intolerance provokes violence and hate. It reminds me of the sectarian violence in Iraq- Sunni vs. Shia. You know, I can no more tell a Sunni from a Shia than I can a Palestinian from a Jew, or than I can an Irish Protestant from an Irish Catholic.

And it's too damn bad that all these groups can be incited into hating all those differences about each other so easily, while they blind themselves to how much they are alike. Sunnis and Shias didn't allow themselves to hate each other for a long while before the American invasion. It doesn't take long for political upheaval and war to quickly boil away man's humanity to one another.

There's a lot of enmity in the history of ALL the races, religions, and creeds of humanity across the globe. Some people can discard the centuries old primitive hate that they are 'supposed' to have for their racial enemies. Some people can see such bigotry for the counter-productive bile that it is. They can see the pain it ends up causing for everyone, including for their own people, over and over.

But, then - there are the ones who inflate these differences by voicing their irrational discord against those differences. They magnify the differences with rhetoric and vitriol. They begin actively avoiding those other people. And as they separate themselves from those people whom they desperately want to blame for problems in their environment, they separate themselves from the reality of those people. They allow themselves to believe their own worst fears about those people, and lose sight of our shared humanity.

The proper way to end this hate breeding is by rational discussion with those on both sides of the fence. It is to not allow separatism. It is not to avoid the other side, but to go to it- to understand that there is a common ground and to actively find it!

The Irish should know better. The Iraqis should know better. Americans DO know better.

Now. After 200 years of intense racism and segregation, we finally know better. Or I thought that we did.

Over the course of my life, I have seen (in West Texas, even) racism slowly slipping away. I see growing tolerance for people of other races and religions- I see people even talking about racism less and less. But, now- like the situation in Iraq- people who are in fear divide themselves. People who fear losing their "power" or their "control" draw lines. Racist white people start getting afraid that Latinos are overtaking the population of America. They fear for the control that white men have had in the past. They stop thinking about Americans as a whole and start thinking instead about White Americans. Where does the division end? Do we return to the whole English based superiority complex over the Italians, French, and Irish?

I believe that Americans as a whole DO know better. But that can change in a blink of an eye. Iraqis have lived in relative sectarian peace for a long while. There were no major Sunni-Shia troubles like we witness now. Where does this new aggression against Mexican-Americans lead? Where else can it possibly lead? In the past six years, I see more racism instead of less. It's the atmosphere of fear and mistrust that rebuilds the walls that Americans tore down in the past fifty years.

So to all the Americans who see fit to throw a fit about Mexican-Americans speaking Spanish: Please take a moment to see past your differences and put aside your racism. It can only lead to more and more hate. You may not think it is racist, or isolationist on your part. But it is. And bringing it up, over and over again- is NOT Helping. Maybe you think that if everyone spoke English your life would be somehow more rewarding? Maybe you believe that America should be homogenized and dumbed down by forcing everyone to give up their customs and traditions for something that YOU relate as "American" because it is your tradition and custom? That is ridiculous. Native Americans are the only ones who should have any claim on "American" traditions and language.

America was a melting pot in 1776. It took a lot of cultures to make America what it is. And America's strength IS ITS DIVERSITY. If it was up to those who want to isolate differences and eradicate them, then we would all wear the same colors, dye our hair the same color, eat the same foods, watch the same tv shows, and read the same books- so that we would all be more alike. I don't believe this would make our country any stronger or more honorable.

There is enough ridiculous hate in the world. There is enough division. Our world's very survival -for the benefit of ALL of mankind's children- relies on our tolerance and our empathy for one another. Put away your petty differences, for the sake of us all.