June, 2015 archive
The Wedding Industrial Complex 0
The resident curmudgeon at my local rag takes on the trend towards self-indulgent wedding wankery.
As my old boss used to say, even a blind squirrel finds an acorn once in a while.
“Clinical Trials” 0
This is the signature legacy of President George the Worst:
Just between You and Me . . . . 0
Mary Bishop tells a secret.
White Americans have a secret we need to share.
It’s the ugly, racist things other whites say to us all the time because they assume we agree with them.
It’s time we stand up to every one of those comments and say no. We do not agree.
When we fail to do so, we perpetuate the racial poison most of us consumed as children.
Doing what she recommends, by the way, is what led to the aforementioned shouting match in the barbershop. Bigots don’t take kindly to having their bigotry called out, because, with rare exceptions, they refuse to admit that they are bigots.
Follow the link for more.
Huckster on the Hustings 0
I got into an unusual conversation with my barber* at my recent haircut, which was on Friday after the gay marriage decision came out.
Turns out that she was raised Southern Baptist, as was I. We compared notes about Sunday school and memory verses (that’s a Baptist thing, or at least it used to be), how so many bits of the Bible contradict other bits, and how much deviant sex the Bible contains, from incest to adultery to you name it.
We also spoke of how persons pluck one phrase out of the Bible and ignore all the contradictory phrases that surround it, how they thunder about a man lying with a man even as they eat shellfish and wear clothing made of multiple fabrics (cotton-polyester anyone?), while missing the message of Jesus, which was love, tolerance, care, and forgiveness.
She’s not particularly liberal by any means–my guess would be quite the opposite when she is in the voting booth–but she can’t figure out why all the hate, why some people just can’t let other people be.
Our conversation didn’t get there, but the answer to “Why all the hate” is quite simple.
Hate sells. There’s always a buyer.
__________________
*This is the same barbershop at which I once got into a shouting match with someone who thinks that Fox News speaks truth. Shouting matches really aren’t my style; I’m more a slow burn kind of guy.
My only defense is that I was infected by the stupid.
Chartering a Course for Disaster 0
It’s all about the grift.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
More adventures in self-politeness . . .
. . . and another gun that seems to discharge itself.
Field of Drones 0
Mark Davis thinks he knows how to select debate participants from the Republican clown bus.
Not good enough. While it avoids the stigma of the laggards’ lineup, who picks the matchups? I’d pay money to put Lindsey Graham right next to Rand Paul. Do we combine Texans Ted Cruz and Rick Perry, or separate them? Same question for Bush and Marco Rubio. And which lucky group gets Trump?
There is only one solution: two debates, names chosen randomly.
Truth and Reconciliation Fuggedaboutit
0
Der Spiegel considers America’s denial of its own history. Here’s a bit; follow the link for the rest.
The US has been less successful, however, in conducting the same process when addressing the dark parts of its own past.
The Day of Gay 0
As I think I’ve mentioned before, nothing that ever happened in a homosexual bedroom affected a marriage of mine. I cannot say the same about heterosexual bedrooms.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness is a family affair.
A police report indicates that the 15-year-old was frantically saying “Uncle, I’m sorry!” to the victim while at the scene. He was reportedly playing with a gun and accidentally shot the 18-year-old.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Thom asks about racism,
Why are we not calling this unpatriotic?
Monumental Events 0
Before every courthouse in every city and county in the South stands a Confederate monument. It commonly takes the form of a statue of a soldier atop a pillar and bears some sort of inscription in memory of those who fought for the Secesh.
Unlike the Confederate battle ensign, Confederate monuments have not become symbols of contemporary hate; for most, I suspect, they fade into the background, though I must admit that this is my own not-black perspective. I have not yet seen a bumper sticker of a Confederate monument on a pick-up truck between the NRA sticker and the Gadsden flag license plate.
Nevertheless, the Charleston shootings and the recent decisions on the part of some stores and governors to remove the Stars and Bars from sale and display have rippled out to include them. In Jefferson Davis’s capital, someone had the gall, the unmitigated gall, to “deface” (in the words of the news story) one with the slogan, “Black Lives Matter.”
Closer to home, the resident curmudgeon of my local rag (working motto: “Other people can’t have nice things”), pretzels her logic to defend a local one as a benign symbol of another time.
“The Middle Finger Having Writ, Moves (Not) On” 0
Isaac Bailey minces no words about the meaning of the Stars and Bars that flies at the South Carolina capitol grounds to black South Carolinians.
Follow the link.
