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.

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.

Red State Radio

While channel surfing on the way to work this morning, I tuned in to the John Boy and Billy show on the local classic rock channel. Since for some ungodly reason the powers-that-be in radio have determined by mass market research that people just don't want to hear MUSIC in the mornings, its either John Boy and Billy or Bob and Tom or about three different channels of local yokels talking to the type of people that call into radio stations to chit-chat. And there's only so many times I can hear some old fart dj mangling somebody's name or the sidekick's fake laugh and exclaimations of "Isn't that funny? That's too funny" .... yeah, I'll listen to elevator music before that shit...

Anyway, sometimes John Boy and Billy are funny, mainly when they are making fun of themselves, but I clicked in just as professional curmudgeon Robert D. Raiford was going into his little speechifying... If you don't know who he is, a simple description is a redneck Andy Rooney, minus the whine and plus a couple of shots of whiskey. He's the old coot who's bitching about why the good ole days were so much better than today. He has some interesting takes, some I don't agree with, but when he hits on something that you DO agree with, he kind of takes you to that "Hell yes!" place with him. Today, he was answering a letter from a conservative fan of the "big show" who was upset about comments Raiford had made about global warming.

Oh hell, here we go, I thought. Here comes the "L" word... And I'll be damned. Ole Raiford tore that poor conservative a new one. Now, Raiford ain't a "liberal", ain't no way- But he sure took the argument that "Mark from Knoxville" was making about politics being behind global warming and shot it out of the sky, skinned it, stuffed it, and hung it on the wall like an extinct exhibit from yesteryear.

It's nothing that most of us Liberals didn't already know: Global warming and climate change IS occurring and most of the people who are telling us this aren't liberals or left-wingers but Scientists and about 95% of them at that. It's just that the smart people out there actually give some credence to the scientists who are telling us about potential problems and actively respond with calls to action.

The only people who are putting politics before facts are the people who decry evidence of climate change- simply because they don't want to hear it. And Raiford stated this very succintly. I wish I could find a link to a transcript- if anyone can let me know.

The amazing thing was- this was on the Big Show - A bunch of Nascar rednecks whose humor mainly consists of denigrating the triumvirate of Red-State Enemies: Women in sports, Gays, and immigrants.

So, I was floored that global warming is now even being accepted by the modern day equivalent of a red-state philosopher- A talk show radio celebrity. And he even slammed a listener to do it. Sumbitch!

Hope for America blossomed anew for a moment- and the one good thing about the Big Show- it actually interrupts its own blather to play some classic rock every 10 minutes. So Raiford ended, the Doobie brothers came on with "Listen to the music". And everything was right in the world.

Well, until the song ended, at least, then - back to reality.

"John-boy" or Billy or some other podunk asshole came on with a sports critic guest. First they set up the critic's credentials. Then they talked of a colleague who had been "Imus-ed" for his disparaging remarks about lesbians in the LPGA. After that "innocuous" preface, they then jumped into making fun of women in sports and how they can't compete with the men. After attacking 15 year old Michelle Wie, they turned to Anna Kournikova and what a "baby doll" she was, I turned the radio completely off.

Sigh. Well, at least we won global warming, for today.