Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Cars are not tombstones.
The only thing more hick than the "In Memory Of..." decals on the back windows of the busted-ass SUV's I see around here are the Dale Earnheardt neck tattoos on the 3oolb dudes driving those SUV's...
Friday, April 13, 2007
Just calm the fuck down America...
Imus got fired...WTF? And don't even get me started on the Duke case...
Ok, granted "nappy-headed hos" is not exactly dinner table conversation but we as a nation need to take the proverbial chill pill. Now I don't listen to Imus, but I'm betting the only reason someone that old even knows the phrase "nappy-headed hos" is because he heard it in a Ludacris song. And I do listen to Ludacris.
That brings up the fucked up part. There are two sections of popular culture. In one half of our culture people are taking words like "nappy headed" and the n-bomb and using them freely, ostensibly because they are the same race. And in the other half of our culture we are held hostage by people like Al Sharpton who have somehow gained the credibility to be able determine what is and isn't racist. Its like we have a school where half the students are learning Yankee Doodle and the other half are being told flutes and drums are evil.
Here's the net-net so to speak. We have become so PC and so afraid of language that communication has suffered. If the government were doing what people like Al Sharpton are pressuring corporations in to doing, it would be a gross violation of free speech. People like Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are just stoking the fire when they make huge deals out of non-events. We have instilled a culture of over-sensitivity. We still have the concept of slavery reparations running around when nobody alive today probably knows anyone, living or dead, that owned a slave back in the 1800's. We give credence and elevate words like "nappy-headed" when we give them six days in a news cycle. If we all learned to let the non-issues slide I think we'd have a better country for it.
Racism isn't a set of words, its an attitude of malice. And maybe Imus is a malicious guy, but he's just the smoke pointing out the fact that there is a fire. But this restrictive and reactionary society isn't healthy, and I'm betting it's breeding the malice while it stamps out the words.
Ok, granted "nappy-headed hos" is not exactly dinner table conversation but we as a nation need to take the proverbial chill pill. Now I don't listen to Imus, but I'm betting the only reason someone that old even knows the phrase "nappy-headed hos" is because he heard it in a Ludacris song. And I do listen to Ludacris.
That brings up the fucked up part. There are two sections of popular culture. In one half of our culture people are taking words like "nappy headed" and the n-bomb and using them freely, ostensibly because they are the same race. And in the other half of our culture we are held hostage by people like Al Sharpton who have somehow gained the credibility to be able determine what is and isn't racist. Its like we have a school where half the students are learning Yankee Doodle and the other half are being told flutes and drums are evil.
Here's the net-net so to speak. We have become so PC and so afraid of language that communication has suffered. If the government were doing what people like Al Sharpton are pressuring corporations in to doing, it would be a gross violation of free speech. People like Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are just stoking the fire when they make huge deals out of non-events. We have instilled a culture of over-sensitivity. We still have the concept of slavery reparations running around when nobody alive today probably knows anyone, living or dead, that owned a slave back in the 1800's. We give credence and elevate words like "nappy-headed" when we give them six days in a news cycle. If we all learned to let the non-issues slide I think we'd have a better country for it.
Racism isn't a set of words, its an attitude of malice. And maybe Imus is a malicious guy, but he's just the smoke pointing out the fact that there is a fire. But this restrictive and reactionary society isn't healthy, and I'm betting it's breeding the malice while it stamps out the words.
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