I can hardly decide who has pissed me off the most in recent weeks. I hope to sort it out here. And because it is hot as hell I am thinking of starting with the easily the loudest, just for organizational reasons. Okay, I am just putting it right out there. I feel sorry for Paula Deen. Here is a woman, a "celebrity chef," who has made a fortune cashing in on the very culture for which she is now a pariah. How in the world is she now to shrug off the very thing she has hung her hat on? Really. C'mon folks. Do we really believe we can sanitize for our own protection our own history? Get real. Anyone and I mean ANYONE who is of Deen's generation, and probably one or two after, who has been shaped and formed by the American South, has at one time or another, used racial epithets. Black folks. White folks. Brown folks. Mixed race. Whatever. And yet there are people with the nerve ---and an enormous amount of fake sanctimony ---who have judged and found her wanting in the social relations department. Gee. Good work there all you Sherlock Holmeses. Personally, I dislike her for a completely different reason -- her recipies kill people. With all that fat and sugar calories you would think a diabetic like Deen, with her supposed talent, would dedicate her life to making healthy food taste better, instead of promoting food that takes the distinctive flavors of the South and drowns them in yuck. Am I saying that racial epithets are okay? Don't be stupid. I am just saying they are there and they remain a reminder of the fact that racism is not dead, no, not even feeling poorly, in America.
Okay, one down. And one which brings me to the second group of summer schmucks who have gotten the attention of the AWM, namely, the US Supreme Court. These idiots remind me of the father who declares his child is potty trained because he hasn't changed a diaper in a while. Their recent gutting of the Voting Rights Act is simply unbelievable, if you believe for one instant that these rich fat white men (all the Justices in the majority ruling are men) care at all for the majority of Americans. Their argument that racism is largely anecdotal, that certain places, predominantly in the South, are no longer racist, is either willfully ignorant or childishly naive. Casual racism is endemic in the South. Remember Governor Rick Perry's Niggerhead Ranch? Just because the name is now changed, do you think anyone has stopped referring to the location by that name? Really? In the South, Southerners sooth their consciences in just exactly the way Lynyrd Skynyrd reminds us-- "we all did what we could do." And what southerners have done isn't much, and certainly it hasn't been enough. Slavery -- not just racism -- but slavery, the legal institutionalized kind, was completely the norm for more than 400 years in this country. You want to declare the end of racism, I suggest you call me after a couple more centuries of legal, institutionalized equality.
And now, for the fans of that little snot Edward Snowden. Now as a mom, I did not always rely on
corporal punishment, because I found out relatively early that you can really make a child realize,without ever laying a hand on them, that they are not the center of the universe. I also found out early that two and three year olds are incredibly flexible nd can twist their bodies in remarkable ways, so that it often takes a few whacks just to land a good solid smack,an exhausting and altogether unsatisfying result that leaves you open to charges of abuse by people who most likely do not have children anyway. However, the occasional butt-smack was in fact a weapon in the armory, as it were, and if I ever saw someone in dire need of a spanking, it is Edward Snowden. This narcissistic jerk lied about his qualifications and misrepresented his intentions in going to work for a security contractor in the first place, earned a six-figure salary, lived in Hawaii, and now calls himself a whistleblower. Certainly, he blows. Just not a whistle. What he has blown up, and way out of proportion, are programs that were the entirely legal results of the Bush Administration's panic attack on civil liberties known as thetrio Patriot Act. His hystrionic supporters consider him to have outed the "Obama administration spying on its citizens," but most of us who have been paying attention for more than the past five minutes, already know that. Most of us also know that our internet postings -- of any type -- are not private any more than our cell phone conversations are private. Most of us accept, like mature adults, that in this day in time we have sacrificed some liberties for security. Most of us are far more accepting of the Government's attempts using our private information for security reasons, than we ever will be of the purely mercenary reasons used by private industry to increase their profits. And you know, I have a really hard time supporting any idiot who claims to want privacy when they shout out personal conversations over cell phones in every public setting you can imagine except maybe church.If you believe in telecommunications privacy of any sort, then you must also believe in unicorns. And another thing. True "whistleblowers" do so out of a sense of righteousness, of loyalty to their country even though it may be doing something awful which should be stopped. And they stick it out -- my country, right or wrong. They don't take support from foreign governments. They don't flee their country. They come out with a Truth and confront the Consequences. Karen Silkwood -- whistleblower. Bradley Manning -- whistleblower. Snowden -- self-aggrandizing, self-important, and self-deporting. The boy needs to be turned over a knee and spanked.
Because the Truth hurts. Now go put a bandage on it.
Okay, one down. And one which brings me to the second group of summer schmucks who have gotten the attention of the AWM, namely, the US Supreme Court. These idiots remind me of the father who declares his child is potty trained because he hasn't changed a diaper in a while. Their recent gutting of the Voting Rights Act is simply unbelievable, if you believe for one instant that these rich fat white men (all the Justices in the majority ruling are men) care at all for the majority of Americans. Their argument that racism is largely anecdotal, that certain places, predominantly in the South, are no longer racist, is either willfully ignorant or childishly naive. Casual racism is endemic in the South. Remember Governor Rick Perry's Niggerhead Ranch? Just because the name is now changed, do you think anyone has stopped referring to the location by that name? Really? In the South, Southerners sooth their consciences in just exactly the way Lynyrd Skynyrd reminds us-- "we all did what we could do." And what southerners have done isn't much, and certainly it hasn't been enough. Slavery -- not just racism -- but slavery, the legal institutionalized kind, was completely the norm for more than 400 years in this country. You want to declare the end of racism, I suggest you call me after a couple more centuries of legal, institutionalized equality.
And now, for the fans of that little snot Edward Snowden. Now as a mom, I did not always rely on
corporal punishment, because I found out relatively early that you can really make a child realize,without ever laying a hand on them, that they are not the center of the universe. I also found out early that two and three year olds are incredibly flexible nd can twist their bodies in remarkable ways, so that it often takes a few whacks just to land a good solid smack,an exhausting and altogether unsatisfying result that leaves you open to charges of abuse by people who most likely do not have children anyway. However, the occasional butt-smack was in fact a weapon in the armory, as it were, and if I ever saw someone in dire need of a spanking, it is Edward Snowden. This narcissistic jerk lied about his qualifications and misrepresented his intentions in going to work for a security contractor in the first place, earned a six-figure salary, lived in Hawaii, and now calls himself a whistleblower. Certainly, he blows. Just not a whistle. What he has blown up, and way out of proportion, are programs that were the entirely legal results of the Bush Administration's panic attack on civil liberties known as thetrio Patriot Act. His hystrionic supporters consider him to have outed the "Obama administration spying on its citizens," but most of us who have been paying attention for more than the past five minutes, already know that. Most of us also know that our internet postings -- of any type -- are not private any more than our cell phone conversations are private. Most of us accept, like mature adults, that in this day in time we have sacrificed some liberties for security. Most of us are far more accepting of the Government's attempts using our private information for security reasons, than we ever will be of the purely mercenary reasons used by private industry to increase their profits. And you know, I have a really hard time supporting any idiot who claims to want privacy when they shout out personal conversations over cell phones in every public setting you can imagine except maybe church.If you believe in telecommunications privacy of any sort, then you must also believe in unicorns. And another thing. True "whistleblowers" do so out of a sense of righteousness, of loyalty to their country even though it may be doing something awful which should be stopped. And they stick it out -- my country, right or wrong. They don't take support from foreign governments. They don't flee their country. They come out with a Truth and confront the Consequences. Karen Silkwood -- whistleblower. Bradley Manning -- whistleblower. Snowden -- self-aggrandizing, self-important, and self-deporting. The boy needs to be turned over a knee and spanked.
Because the Truth hurts. Now go put a bandage on it.
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