Cantankerous Chicanery

Along with the absurd birthers movement, one of the more ridiculous fringe political ideologies to arise in recent times has been the attempted politicalization of Christmas. What is seemingly on the surface such an innocent celebration of family and community has come under attack from extremist fundamentalist Christians.

Before you get the wrong idea, I’m not taking away anything from those who have faith. I’m perfectly fine with such an expression of religion. What does bother to me to an extent is when others attempt to shove it in the general public’s faith.

Fanning the flames of this alarmist and jingoistic reaction is Bill O’Reily. The puppet over at FOX News who’s more misguided than an amnesiac working as a tour guide has whipped people into a frenzy over a perceived “War on Christmas”, as if Jews and atheists are out there, demolishing department store doorbusters and kicking over any Santas in people’s front yards. I hate to break it to everyone out there, but that simply isn’t the case.

We get Charlie Brown specials on TV, trees being sold in every venue imaginable, and consumer goods going out like hotcakes. Christmas ain’t goin’ anywhere. If anything, celebrations like Kwanza and Hanukkah are pushed to the side. Not to sound like some uptight P.C. liberal, but that is the truth.

As someone currently working in the public sector, I alternate between wishing people “Happy Holidays” and “Merry Christmas”. I don’t wish to offend anyone but I’ve had it up to here with the wishy-washy euphimisms academic multicltarlists wish us to use. There are other holidays going on but I doubt just because I say “Merry Christmas” that they think I’m planning to set fire to a mosque in the name of God anytime soon. Just enjoy your holiday whatever it may be and be done with it.

I enjoy Christmas to a degree (more about that later) but its roots aren’t even in Christian doctrine. Like a good majority of American endeavours, its had its roots elsewhere. This doesn’t stop uninformed right-wingers who guzzle down Mountain Dew, watch NASCAR, and wave cheap flags from claiming it as their own. Christians are like the cultural version of eBaums World: they call it their own later on.

Christmas began as a pagan recognition of winter solstice, the season when it would get cold and vegetation would die off, signifying the switching of the seasons. Through a convoluted series of folklore exchange, involving pieces of Germany, it made its way over here in the form we all love and begrudingly tolerate because we have to see the in-laws  love now so dearly.

If religion is such an important aspect of Yuletide cheer, why is Santa Claus the mascot, and not ol’ Yahweh? I don’t recall anyone kneeling at the altar of the elves. Could we put aside our theological zealotry for one day and just chillax? I find it ironic that the spirit of X-Mas is about giving and tolerance for all mankind (another soundbite from the Bible itself) and yet al some people do is wage wordy war based on their own beliefs.

In fact, Christians were initially opposed to it, seeing as it involved worldly gift-giving and didn’t include the element of slobbering love and appreciation for Jesus every single second of the day like the church seems to approve of. Only when there was a mythical threat from the heathen left did judgemental Republicans claim it was a festival they were so endowed to.

This will be the first part in a trilogy examining my thoughts about Christmas and its different aspects. Keep an eye out when tomorrow I examine what I feel is the increasing commercialization of Christmas and the unfortunate attitude of consumerism it breeds. You’ll be surprised, though, given that I’m a hardened misanthrope, what I truly feel about the holidays. Until then, ciao and remember to keep “stmas” in Christmas!

Back in 08, when Obama got elected, we were on the heels of what we assumed was “change”. That was the buzzword of his campaign; no longer would we see extremist bullheaded warhawks. We would be getting a rational intellectual who would lead us to the promised land of America.

Now in 09 we find that may not be the case. The golden boy is losing some of his shine and is somewhat cracking under pressure. I must admit, I was one of those idealistic liberals who voted for him. I was interested in his positions on certain issues. Shit, you want the neocons to continue running this country into the ground for the next four years?

Now he’s reversing his stance on some issues. An interesting article that recently ran in Time magazine about how one of Obama’s top foreign security aides, Greg Craig, recently resigned after Obama softened on his plea to keep troops out of Afghanistan.

It’s a tricky situation to navigate, that of the of the politician, and so in that regard I don’t envy him one bit. While the hardcore, Birkenstock, wearing, frappuccino-sipping San Francisco college professors might have been enticed by his original promises, the reality is that the vast majority of Americans out there want a balanced methodology.

Obama has had to appease the more moderate base out there, as well as cool of the flames of the negative reaction the likes of Charles Kruthammer and other such Bush apologists have demonstrated. This involves bending on his initial outline and even what some might consider “selling out”. Why haven’t we ended the War in Iraq yet? Why hasn’t Guantanamo Bay been shut down? Where’s the quick and swift health care reform? And for God’s sakes, can we fix the damn economy already?

I understand when Obama came into office, it was not under pleasant or idyllic circumstances. But he knew that going, and that should have actually only strengthened his resolve. Instead, we see a weak-willed Ivy League bookworm seemingly crumbling ineffectually under pressure. One has to wonder, however well-intentioned this bid at health care reform is, if it isn’t a slight of hand to distract us from the fledgling stock market out there.

While we finally saw a politician attempt to stand up to the tyrannical bureaucracy of the HMOs and hospitals, but he really couldn’t have picked a worse time to enact this. He should be fixing the monetary situation here, and that doesn’t mean tossing a few dollars here and there in government programs that we all know will get wasted anyway.

The ugly situation over in the Middle East goes without saying, as well. The rising sociological tide says Obama got elected because Americans were disgusted with Bush and his hardline stance on war. We elected a Democrat hoping he would bring the hammer down on millions of troops getting killed every day. Now, not so much. We’ve seemingly forgotten about our failing military effort. The demonstrations have stopped because people are so simultaneously entranced and enraged with our commander in chief.

Perhaps Obama is simply too honest and endearing to be involved with the dirty cesspool that is politics. While I’m sure he’s far from a saint—I’m sure he has his skeletons in his closet as well—he strikes me as a modern-day version of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. A hopeless romantic entrenched in the most corrupt of endeavors, starting off with grand dreams but forced to taint or outright squash them to appease not only the backstabbing careerists in his cabinet, but the average dolt and loud-mouthed pundit out there.

Could it be his youth and inexperience as well? It’s acknowledged the public sector is not a young man’s game. Say what you will about Clinton or even Bush, but they knew how to implement strategies and promote their actions (or close to it, in Bush’s case). While Obama may have been a decent senator, getting his start, should he really be put into the most powerful position in the free world?

Still, I can’t help but feel that I’ve been had by some clever charlatan. I felt, perhaps arrogantly, that I had looked beyond the style and saw some of the substance underneath. I viewed the debates, I paid attention to what he actually said in his speeches. Perhaps the country got swept up in a fervor of anti-Republicanism and just elected him out of a blind whim. Beneath the smile, the glib manner, the charisma and the nice suits, we see there not be so much he has to offer. Only time will tell. I don’t hope he fails like Rush Limbaugh or any of the other conservative tards, but it may be heading that way…..

So Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan flipped out and mowed down a couple of his fellow soldiers in a hail of gunfire By now everyone knows about the infamous outburst at Fort Hood. The question that remains is, why? What exactly were his reasons and motivations? I think this is what is haunting the American consciousness the most.

Was he an anti-American crusader aligned with al-Queda or simply another alienated nut disgruntled with his job? The answers seem to pointing in both directions. Not to descend into alarmist hyperbole, but we may be seeing a new movement on the rise: self-made crusaders who will lash out at random, with seemingly no provocation.

Let’s go over the facts as they have been reported so far (although we must remember they are reported by the media, and so are always suspect). Hasan listed no religious preference on his profile, and reportedly had difficulty passing the exam to become a psychiatrist. Family had noted how he was unmarried and later on spoke of his disgust with the Iraq war and his fear of going over there.

This sounds to me like a man raised in a secular world and cut off from his original creed. I’ve known a few Muslim, and as they gradually become Westernized, they shed off the conservative veneer of their old ways and become affiliated with American popular culture. It seems they’re constantly in a struggle to reconcile their old way of life with the modern zeitgeist.

The fact that he went unmarried is also suspect. Not to downgrade those who chose to be bachelors (in fact, I’m one myself), but I can imagine he generally just felt like a troubled and outcast person. On a minor side note, this seems like more pro-marriage propaganda designed to make those who are independent look like violent oddballs. What we’re seeing here is an alarminng response to our disconnected, cold culture in the form of George Sodini, Cho Seung-Hui, and Raymond J. Clarke III: violence and outrageous murder and massacre become the only way for those at the fringes of our (admittedly) uncaring world to express their internal feelings of rage and emptiness.

I don’t think Hasan was a terrorist in training, per se, but rather a man who already wasn’t playing with a full deck and sought out an extreme ideology to blend in with. Thus, unfortunately, he found his way over to radical Islamic sites. Those who fear another 9/11 are panicking a bit too much; like I’ve pointed out, this doesn’t strike me as part of larger plot or coup against America, but rather a tragedy perpetuated by a stressed-out man who sought out a controversial position after the fact.

However, and stick with me on this point, the fact that an Army psychiatrist has gone crazy and formed anti-establishment opinions should raise some questions. I think one issue that’s going criminally ignored here is the stress being placed on soldiers in the military right now. How many times have we read about a fighter going AWOL, coming back home and suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, or (as is the case now) opening fire on his fellow recruits?

The thought of going over to Afghanistan, and the horror stories those who had been told him, made him nervous, and in a “fight or flight” panic frame of mind, he took a gun and killed a good many people. When conditions are that bad that a psychologist goes crazy, things are baaaaad.

Once again, we see alarmingly lax regulations in the public sector. Despite the fact that he has been acknowledged to have “past difficulties” (which have not been elaborated on), the military of all people still let him in without a second thought. Is our collective apathy and laziness really worth crazies like this slipping through the cracks? We’re held up to the utmost standards n other areas of our life, like ludicrous parking standards and paying college tuition. But when it comes to the arguably most important areas of society, this is what we witnessed?

The tension being placed on them in the wake of the Iraq war and the War on Terrorism is unimaginable. And with a seemingly thankless public and apathetic President, what else are they to do? This reeks to me of the evils of the industrial-military complex. We place such a high demand on these men to go into hostile and violent landscapes, with no sense of individuality and humanity, to kill other human beings, all in the name of nationalism and securing our oil so we can pump our precious cars and drive around.

If recent stories are any indication, the mismanagement in the military is severely understated. We’ve seen the horrors and evils of war go all the way back to the publication of books like Slaughterhouse Five and Catch 22.

As well, and not to make excuses and scapegoat the victims, but apparently Hasan had been harassed for being a Muslim. One can imagine those in the Army are, truthfully, not the most tolerant and intellectual people in the world. Even in recent reports and reactions (”will there be another mass bombing from them“, “this is proof we definitely can’t trust those kinds”), we’re seeing anti-Muslim sentiment break out once again.

I caution those who want to blame solely the Arab community and think they all hate the red, white, and blue. Many move over here for a better opportunity and because they think they’l rise up in prosperity if they work hard (oh, how wrong they’ll find that ideology to be). The Arab community has reportedly spoke out against 9/11 and other such extremist attacks.

Remember, Allah has instructed his followers that violence is wrong and any such sinners would not be allowed into the afterlife. It just speaks to the usual strand of nativism that has afflicted this country: we saw it against the Irish and Italian in the early 1900s and recently against Mexican immigrants. Despite the fact that we’re a nation of migrants (and the Native Americans were the sole original inhabitants of this country), we seek to vilify anyone who doesn’t fit into our suburban WASP vision of perfection.

I recall a few years ago when me and my ex-girlfriend were still dating. We had gotten on the topic of marriage. Being a stout commitment-phobe, I tried to back away from the conversation and admit my apprehension at discussing the topic when I was only 19 years old. However, she insisted on pressing the issue. A few monhs later, we had an unceremonious break-up. So much for women’s lib.

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend in today’s females. It seems, by and large, many of them accept without question a secondary role. The radical contingent that arose in the 1960s, which called for voting rights and more respect for what was stereotypically thought of “the weaker sex, has now died off a slow but sure death.

All the girls I see walking around today seem to have no appreciation or knowledge of their foremothers before them who fought so hard to be able to get a foot in the workplace or strike out on their own. Instead, I see them accept a sad fate of wearing revealing and suggesting clothes to attract some guy to support them. An alarming trend is arising in which this decade is seeing more co-dependent, psychologically unstable ladies turn to relationships, casual flirting, and empty sex because they come from broken homes and harbor low self-esteem.

It’s become sad to note the fatality of gender rights. Whereas in previous decades women fought tooth-and-nail to appear strong and achieve oppurtuniies previously only reserved for men, now many young woman happily accept stereotypical subservient role, often without any sort of question at all. After a while, it became depressing to note how fragile and dependent on this mytological idea of love being sold by TV and movies many of my sigficant others were. It got to the point where I’d had to ask myself, “What the hell is happening?”

Before you come along and think I’m demonizing any woman who gets married or is a housewife or who puts on lipstick before going out to a club, don’t get the wrong idea. Just because a woman takes on the burden of raising a kid doesn’t automatically make her a spineless weakling. I realize when you have kids, it is not only crucial but essential to raise them, and the natural maternal instinct takes over. A woman can obviously be a stay-at-home mom and still be a strong, independent spirit.

But the rate at which my young peers are hooking up and staying hitched is an alarming rate. Far from the image society has of us where all we do is party and fuck without consequence or intimacy, now it seems everyone I know wants to stay in a comitted, obsessive partership starting at age 10. For God’s sakes, we’re young adults! You have your whole life ahead of you! Would it kill you to have a little fun and explore the world first? This is teenage drama and the error of immature emotions taken to the extreme. When you get together at such a young and unsure age, it’s pund to fail, and that’s never good for both parties. It is a statistic that young marriages are more bond to fail than others.

What we have now is women are being raised unsure about themselves. They’re told that their bodies and sex appeal are all they truly have to offer. But after the tide of political correctness, it’s now a more subtle message. Instea of being more in-your-face about the appeal of the flesh, now we get more psychological manipulation. Think about the gentle romcoms that portray a hapless female business executive who, despite their professional success, are lacking in what really should make a person’s life: the comfort of a man’s touch.

It’s a dark day to see many women I know put up with abusive or neglient white-trash drug dealer boyfriends because “I really know him”. It’s heady times ahead when I see teenage girls drop out of high school or college because they’re pregnant and think having a baby will solve all of their existential dilemnas. And it’s almost a slap in the face to types like Gloria Steinem and Naomi Klein when women wihstand the 345th breakup between them and their bfs because it’s all they know.

With the 60s and 70s long gone and the 2000s almost coming to a close as well, we’ve seen the slow and gradual eulogy for the biker culture unfolding. With the psychedelic guitar riffs waning and being replaced by bass beats for rap songs, so we rarely hear the engine of a Harley Davidson reving up in the night. What’s caused this, where have these tattooed outlaws gone to, and why do guys on bikes these days insist on shaving?

When the culture first emerged, they were seen as renegades, thugs, and violent criminals. No less than the FBI came down on them. They were rumored (and noted) to have dealt in drug dealing, arms trafficking, murder, and had ties to big-time organized crime. Now you can go to a chop shop on the side of your local highway and get advice and suggestions from a friendly sales associate that resembles more of Wal-Mart than a road gang.

I feel torn about this lost way of life. On one hand, it’s easy to romanticize these rebels. They were nonconformists in a day and age when it was hard and even dangerous & life-thretaning to be a pariah, and wher eyou couldn’t just go buy leather accessories at the local Hot Topic to piss mommy and daddy. They were hard-drinking, tough charaters who didn’t take shit off of anybody and did things their own way, the laws and rules of society be damned.

At the same time, while it’s easy to think of them as modern-day pirates, it’s easy to forget they were basically heartless thieves who would just as soon slit your throat as look at you. In a sense, they seem like bullies who were overly masculine. Also, I’m not a big fan of their at-times seemingly blatant racism and their attitude towards women (they commonly viewed them as property).

The hippies, interestingly, hired them as security for many of their concerts, seeing a kindred spirit in their anti-establishment ethos and hoping this was a way to stick it to The Man. What they didn’t realize, however, was that these two groups couldn’t be more different from each other. Flower children believed in peace and love and saw the existing order as impediments to their utopia; Hell’s Angels and the like just wanted to get high and fuck and fight and hated authority because cops tend to frown upon those sorts of things.

So the question is, are they an idealistic free romaing society or a group of violent malcontents built on menace and destruction? Who knows. I’m not a member of a biker group, nor do I know anyone in such a group. I wasn’t around in the old days, so my judgemnet is perhaps a bit skewed.

What I do know is that nowadays, whatever your opinion on the past incarnations, “bikers” nowadays (to use that term loosely) tend to be the typical weekend warriors. They work some office job or at a garage shop during the day and on their off time they like to go barreling down the freeway in chaps and T-shirts that are way too tight for their beer bellies. What has happened to the freedom of the open pavement?

Like everything else in life, and as is the fate of all seemingly misanthropic movements, it has been adopted and sanitized by the mainstream. I have an unle that swears by his bikes and patronizes the Harley Davidson store but he’s one of the nicest guys I’ve met.

Most of your typical bikers now are old 40 year old men looking to the past for nostalgia, trying to reconcile their youth spent tripping massive balls on LSD with the current reality of working some shit minmum-wage job, so they turn to Budweiser and doing air guitar whenever they hear dad rock in public to try and seem cool. O’, it truly was dust in the wind, if ya catch my drift.

It would be an effortless task to generalize all of these days as harmless suburbanites who know nothing of true grit and glory like the bikers of the past. And yet, who’s to judge them? Who’s to define what makes a true biker? By its very definition, the biker culture involves a love and respect for riding choppers. That is all. Should we demonize these modern incarnations simply because they have respectable careers, father children, and pay their taxes? I think not, in a sense.

This isn’t going to be an easy post to write. Not only is this a controversial issue, but it’s one that personally hits home for me. Nonetheless, I will go on with it. Today I’d like to discuss smoking: the aspects of it, the effects of it, and why I still support people’s right to do it.

It’s a very dicey subject in today’s culture. No wonder, seeing as it does lead to health problems and can severly fuck up your lungs and all. I’m going to share something personal with you; my dad died from lung cancer about a few years ago. He was a chain smoker who went through about a few packs a day. So I know firsthand the dagers of tobacco and nicotine.

With all the anti-smoking sentiment out there, you’d think it’d be enough to deter the youth of America, right? Why is then hat all I see are college campuses are kids lighting up? We’re talking about mature adults who (presumably) intelligent enough to make sound and rational decisions. And they still turn to the cancer sticks?

By now, the malevolent effects of smoking should be clear to anyone. They damage your body and are incredibly addicive. What’s worse is that, by itself, tobacco builds up pretty big tolerance effects, but the coprorations hawking this product add extra stuff to ensure you, the customer, are hoked for life. You pay with your own death, in some cases.

Sure, a pack of joes is pretty bad. But it should also be pretty obvious this isn’t the world’s brightest idea. I mean, come on, you’re filtering smoke through your body! Did you think coughing for two minutes straight couldn’t come without consequences? So, as much as the companies are to blame, so is the individual. It is my philosophy that each and every human being makes choices in life, and we are to be held accountable every second for the consequences of our actions.

At the same time, I truly am disgusted with the business execs that sit there in their high-rise offices in their nice suits, profitting off of people sitting in hospital beds, hooked to iron lungs. It’s hilarious to hang around artsy wana-be bohemians ranting about “The Man” and corporate America while lighting up a Marlboro…..failing to realize not only is that a represetation of an evil company, but that they’re doing themselves and their hygeine a diservice. Nothing quite says rebelling like putting money in the pocket of Joe Camel.

At the same time, there is a rising tide of anti-smoking prejudice in this country. I know we didn’t come here on Plymouth Rock with syringes and beans, but when did we all turn into a country of Minor Threat fans? I have a controversial statement to point out: not every person who smokes dies of lung cancer or other tobacco related disease. Some claim to have refuted that. But if you look around you, you’ll find that to be a bit true. Keep in ind this is coming from someone who (as I mentioned earlier) lost a close family member from smoking. We’ve gotten to the point in this country when we make someone feel if they even look at a pack of fags in a gas staton they’ll have a stroke right there.

I’m going to assert a dicy attitude: we have to let people try things and decide for themselves. A libertarian attitude, if you will. By now, people are morons if they’re not aware of the adverse health effects of cigarettes. But we also can’t try to control people’s behavior or police their personal lives. That would make us no better than Stalin’s Soviet Union. There’s also going to be an outlaw allure to the vices we banish and demonize in our minds.

I’ve heard of a few businesses that will fire you if you’re a smoker, and that is the most repressive thing to me. Someone’s private preferences away from the workplace are none of the bosses’ business. How is that not discrimination? We can’t become moral police and control everyone based on what we think is right or wrong. If you don’t smoke or don’t particularly care for it, that’s fine.

I’ll make a concession—I tried cigarettes a few times. I found I didn’t acre for them and they did me aboslutely nothing. So you know what I did? I quit. Simple as that. I chomp on cigars every so often, and even then I’m trying to lessen my intake of that. I almost feel guilty the rare time I press a Black & Mld to my lips, as I think of my dad.

Even our shining knight in armor, Barack Obama, has struggled with going cold turkey. So not everyone with an ashtray in the house is an evil degenerate scumbag taht deserves to rot in hell. The same people who abstain from smoking and are fanatical about it and get in your face over it are the same ones who will exercise until their bones break or drink themselves into a stupor.

If someone around me was smoking, you know what I do? I get up and walk away if it’s bothering me. Simple as that. I don’t try to give them a D.A.R.E. pamphlet or call up the Surgeon General to lecture them. I just remove myself if it wafts into my nose. we live in a free country, and one of the prices of liberty is respecting one’s another’s differences and agreeing to disagree.

The lesson people seem to have forgotten in today’s society is moderation. The choice of lifestyles is quickly ranging from “Just Say No” to an all-out bender with blow being snorted off a hooker’s ass. Basically, just have fun and indulge in your dark side, but don’t let it get out of control. As my English teacher noted in class this week, “Somnetimes the devil’s a little fun to hang out with”. But I wouldn’t have him as a roomate. You catch my drift?

Man, are people making a big stink about the whole health care controversy or what?

 One unfortunate part of the Gates/Crowley debacle was that it took attention away just as Obama was trying to push his reform plan through Congress.

Methinks it was a bit of a coup: Republicans saw an opening, a flaw in Obama’s shining radiance of perfection, a chink in the armor, and zeroed in on the kill.

Both sides are freaking out and acting like it’s the Second Coming: right-wingers claim this will be the start of Big Brother and the government controlling our lives (neverminding it’s already practically that way), while liberals claim this is a magical cure-all and that life after this will be a wonderful paradise where nobody will ever fall through the cracks.

Ibasically support Obama’s health care reforms, although there are even more obvious strides to be made.

The problem is the alarmist hyperbole on both sides. What’s really going on (and what’s a criminally overlooked problem) is that people don’t comprehend what’s actually going on. The average man reads so much legalese and politco talk that they don’t get the basic idea that the goverment will regulate which hospitals we get to go to, in a socialistic swoop deisgned to see that everyone gets affordable coverage (provided you don’t already have a pre-preferred provider, which you can keep if you want).

Lord knows why I’m even writing this, as Leonard Pitts and Eugene Robinson have already done excellent pieces tearing these guys to shreds. I hate to waste bandwith on these half-witted ignoramuses, but here it goes.

Out there, somewhere, around the orbit of Mars I presume, is a rising movemnet called the “birthers”. Far from New Age guys in touch with their feelings who are re-living their own birth, they claim Obama’s seat in the Oval Office is a sham because he was not actually born in America.

What they base their claims on or where they acquire such information is about as clear as going to a laser light show with sunglasses on, but they stand by their point. They claim Obama was not conceived in this country.

Never mind that there have been announcements in the Hawaiian newspaper proclaiming his coming into this world or the fact that HE HAS PRODUCED A BIRTH CERTIFICATE CERTIFYING THIS.

God, I swear, right-wingers will claw at any little shred of anything they can get at to smear this man’s reputations. When they linked his middle name to terrorists, they  moved on to scare tactics of calling him a *gasp* commie.

Now that the initial fear has worn off and Americans aren’t buying their alarmist crap, this is what they throw at us. Far be it from them to challenge him on his ideas for government or where he stands on certain platforms (and these platforms happen to be outside the jurisdiction of this country, mind you).

How do I know Mitt Romney and Rush Limbaugh were born here, after all? They raise a good point: unless someone carries proof of citizenship on them 24/7, I think everybody’s suspect. I always did think Sean Hannity sounded a bit too Mexican to be a true patriot…..

“Traitor!”

By now I’m sure most of you have heard about the scandal involving one Henry Louis Gates Jr. For those of you living under a rock (or in the ghetto….BURN!), Mr. Gates (not Bill, otherwise he coulda just bought his way out of this turbulence), had left his keys or something or otehr in his house.

Being the Harvard-educated genius that he is, he decided to break into his own house. Living in something of an affluent area, one of his neighbors (keep in mind most of the people there are the typical NPR-listening, left-win scholarly type) decided to call the cops.

Sgt. Crowley arrived and accousted Mr. Gates immediately. Mr. Gates flew off the handle, accusing the officer of racism and saying this is what happens to black folks in America. The officer arrested Mr. Gates for unruly conduct.

Bad enough, but then the shit hits the fan and leaks into the air conditioner somewhat. Barack Obama goes on teleision and calls Crowley’s actions stupid. The media and blogosphere catches wind of this, an uproar ensues, and so like any politician he realizes he put his foot in his mouh and backpedals, inviting the two over for a drink. Glad to see our president relates to common folks by doing what so many of them are doing in this fucked-up economy.

Whoo. That’s a doozy, ain;t it? So let’s sifyt through all this partisan and racist crap and see what’s crackin’. I did allude to the fact that I would be delivering my thoughts about this las post and, as you can imagine from my opinions last piece, you’ll see where I’m headed with this.

I think both parties are at fault, to some degree. For one, let’s place the finger of blame at Henry Louis Gates. That’s not a popular or easy choice, but we have to view this hrough an objective lens and not the fiery glasses of ethnicity or personal experience.

It goes without saying that as someone who teaches at Harvard, he should know better. To fly off the handle at an authority figure as he is just doing his job and going through the procedures of the law is inexcusable, no matter what one’s past may color about his current upbringing.

What annoys me is his sense of entitlement. I’m not trying to come off as Rush Limbaugh 2.0 or another Angry White Guy (TM), but it honestly does bristle me just a bit when every minority assumes they are being treated unfairly when they don’t get everything handed to them on a silver platter.

Did the Caucasian race fuck up once before? No doubt. Did we treat anyone who didn’t have white pigmentation like complete and utter garbage? Yes. But the sins of the past are now trying to be amended. The problem is, a lo of people won’t let change faciliate or accpet forgiveness.

It would be absolutely ignorant to claim there isn’t a slight tide of reverse racism going on in this country. I’m not as selfish as to claim I get denied on a job application because they see I’m white. But…..there’s BET. If I tried to start a White Entertainment Teleision, do you know how much Jesse Jackson and Reverend Al Sharpton would be calling for my head?

Let me tell you a little story: about a year ago I was driving back with some friends from a bingo match (the fact that I played bingo that night should give you some idea about my social life). Turns out I was driving without my proper headlights on. Keep in mind I had just gotten this car a week ago and was still trying to get used to all the gadgets and mechanics of it.

Anyway, the police pull me over. Seeing as I had a Pink Floyd shirt on, and was a young adult, with my other friends dressed in the alternative get-up of the day. They immditaely proceed to search my car, wihout any real probable cause, mind you. They find Bob Marley and Sublime CDs. You don’t think, in their mind, I fit a certain stereotypical profile and that they weren’t judging me?

I’m making the point that it happens to everyone, regardless of race.

Really, how can Henry Louis Gates Jr. bitch when he fucking had a tenured post at Harvard? I’m struggling to just get by at my rinky-dink university. Does he know the suffering experienced by white trash in trailer park communities? What about the misguided black and Hispanic youth trapped in the hood, shooting one another, selling drugs just to get by, knocking up the girl down the street, with their hopes of becoming the next 50 Cent and Lil’ Wayne their only wish to live for?

A lot of times, intellectuals have a martyr complex even though they don’t realize just how damn friggin’ good they have it.

It was also sickening to see Gates act like some obnoxious actor trying to get into a nightclub with his cries of “Do you know who I am?” More douchebaggey elitism. We care so much about titles and official positions in this country, it’s ridiculous.

Now, I will concede that Sgt. Crowley was a bit at fault too. As many have pointe dout, Henry Louis Gates is 56 and walks with a cane. Not your typical bad-ass robber. True, he was doing his job, but being a hot-headed prick with a tiny penis and an inferiority complex to make up for, I’m sure he intimidated Mr. Gates. Shoving him in the back of a cop car, no matter how belligerent he was, was unncecessary.

You’d be bold-face lying if you also tried to say he didn’t see what most cops see in their tunnel vision: a black man (no matter how old)

Obama was way off-guard calling their actions stupid. Obviously his personal friendship with Gates influenced him. not only was it a wrong judgement, but as a public figure (y’know, the president), he should have known better. Perhaps emotion got the better of him. I can understand in thatcase, but it was still a faux pas.

Unlike a lot of scared crackers, I don’t think he’ll be aligning himself with the Black Panthers soon. If anything, I think this was actually a coup to align himself with the African-American and Democrat vote.

The part that makes me chuckle in all of this is the fact that the person who made the call was pat of this affluent, so-called enlightened and educated left-wing neighborhood. Too often academia loves to do endless study after endless study talking about the effects of liqour/single parents/Barney/{insert social scapegoat here} on the cycle of poverty and violence in inner-city neighborhoods (codewood for the ghetto).

As hey relax in their Volvos and sip wine, they remove themselves from the violence, braggadocio, and authenticity of that sort of hip-hop mindframe. A lot of the bourgeois likes to fool themselves into thinking they’re above the common man’s vices, but they;re just as prejudiced, if not more so, than the next KKK member.

They like to put blacks and Spnaish people and Asians up on a pedestal. As shown here, in the face of anonymity, and in the heat of the moment, they wil be just as reactionary and prejudiced as ever.

What really happened is Obama, Crowley (a good majority of cops to me are just bullying, stupid, jock asshoels to me), and Gates each stepped out of line and over-reacted in their own ways. The media picked up on this and, as usual, made a mountain out of a hill.

I think what this really says about us is we are still uncomfortable with one another. Like it or not, the truth is racial tensions still exist. Whites are still frightened that they will lose their power and grip on the world, and blacks are still pissed about that whole slavery and segregation deal. Trust me, as a New Orleans resident I went through Katrina, and the ugly reality of a racial cold war became all-too-clear to me, sadly enough.

The difference is now we’re trying to sweep it under the rug. We tell the polite and conveinent lie that things are cool and we’rea all united as one, even though when Eminem first burst onto the scene rap heads did a double-take and you rarely see a brother on the local golf course.

A storms’a brewin’, folks, and it ain’t gonna be pretty when it blows over. Trust me on that one.

By the way, isn’t it positive that Obama trys to hint that getting shit-faced is the solution to one’s problems? Nice to see we get past the chains of opression to give the thumbs-up to alcoholism. Nice message to send to the kiddies there.

As a final word, check out the awkward looks Snoop Dogg and Nelly give Alien Ant Farm as they crash the BET Awards (an “exclusive” event, keep that in mind…..back to that coloreds only deal, I guess?) and just let the lyrics of this song really settle in:

The N word; it’s a controversial epiphet. It reeks of ugliness and bears with it a history of racial violence and opression. For the controversial sake of flipping off the P.C. police and getting this out of the way, let’s go ahead and say it: nigger.

It’s a disgusting word in and of itself, no doubt. I think it’s something about the way the ni is placed by the i. The way it rolls off your tongue like a dripping acid, the clunkiness of the actual arrangement of consonants and vowels itself.

No doubt the way some people shy away from it is the all-too-known bigoted baggage it carries. The way it was used to hold down an entire generation of black men, to justify taking fellow human beings and relegating them to the status of mere animals.

There are those who say we should bury this word and let it die off. Controversially, I have to disagree with it a bit. Of course, I’m not fond of it being tossed around in everyday casual use. Not one bit.

But…..and this is a big and important but…..I don’t think we should altogether bury this word and banish it from the English language. To leave it behind and preten d it doesn’t exist is ignoring its true strength. It’s like burying a corpse under the rug. It’s a hush-hush solution, a proverbial elephant in the corner of the room, if you will.

It is necessary to live through this pain and remember the searing quality it had. In the Freddy vs. Jason movie, the subplot was the teens in the town didn’t know about Freddy because their parents erased all records of him from the newspapers. They were keeping them in the dark about their sordid past, but he still came back to haunt them.

This is a lesson that should be learned. In a way, we kinda have to educate kids today about its history so they are aware of their current present situation and learn to appreciate the boundaries that have been broken down today.

One controversy that has arisen lately is the change of it to “nigga”. Nigga is a slang term comonly used to identify friendship and instill a mood of comfort and closeness. There are those who say it’s fine and that black people are actually taking it back, and there are those who say its use spreads ignorance and, no matter what, it’s a word that shold never again be uttered by human tongues.

I’m kind of in the middle. On one hand, I feel simply changing the er to an a is ridiculous and really does or changes nothing. There’s also a hint of exclusitivity and reverse racism when it comes to blacks saying it’s exclusively for them and that white people aren’t allowed to use it.

Yet on the flip side of the coin, it does have better and more positive connotations at this point. My main thing in all of this is, really, it’s just a world. In a way earlier post, I noted how the idea of profanity is silly because they’re just a collection of letters we, collectively as a society, have deemed inappropriate.

A word is simply what we make of it. If, in a decade, we picked “iced tea” as an ethnioc slur, soon we wouldn’t want to think of it or even say it. Nigger and nigga are both just words. It’s not the inherent form of the word itself, but simpky the meaning we imbue in it.

Well, that’s all for me now at Cantankerous Chicanery. Obviously, with the recent Crowley-Obama scandal, racial issues are in the air and this tension has been on my mind lately. Stay tuned soon for my thoughts on the whole Henry Louis Gates scandal.