Living in America

Sometimes living in America is something I could do without. I was riding BART home last night, when some old, white, half-toothless guy opened by telling me he voted for Obama. When I didn’t immediately scream “Me too!”, hug him, buy him dinner and fuck him doggy-style, he looked confused.

“Didn’t you vote?” Of course I did and I told him so. He still couldn’t grok that I hadn’t voted for GOBAMA.

My brother called me the other night to bait me by saying over and over again, “How come you didn’t work hard enough on getting out the Obama vote?” I’ve never thought “Let’s antagonize women for fun” was a terribly amusing game, and I still don’t.

The old BART passenger, who will hereafter be called Mr. Fundypants, continues his (inexpert and actual content-free) hagiography of the senator from IL. I told him at that point that I didn’t listen to people talking about God, nor was I interested in his evangelizing.

That shut him up for about two minutes. He then began the next onslaught with “I believe the abortions issue is the most important thing, and we need to get rid of it as a wedge issue by making it illegal so we can move on.”

I retorted that only a man could think he had “moved on”, and that if making things illegal worked to move us on, then alcohol would still be illegal.

Mr. Fundypants continued to exhibit incredibly poor rhetorical, not to mention logical skills, and I parried each one as is my wont. With each successful sally I made countering him, he became visibly more agitated.

I have had this same situation lately at a website I frequented. For some reason, men seem to think that if they lay out all their “arguments” and I’m still not convinced, well, then I’m stupid, venal, mean, or wrongheaded, not actually deserving of my own opinion.

I’m fairly tired of it. I’ve seen someone scream at me telling me my support of affirmative action is racist, sexist and bigoted, but when a white male says he supports the exact same program, well, it’s just his opinion so that’s okay.

Yet when this discrepancy is pointed out as being racist, sexist, and bigoted in its own right (b/c it implies that the only acceptable support for programs like AA must come from white males) there’s no further discussion, just an outbreak of OMGYOUDIDNTJUST CALLMEARACISTBLAAAGAAAARRRGHHHHH!!!

This is what passes for “discussion” among the young white males. Sort of disproves that whole “master race” theory, doesn’t it?

Basically, many young white males truly believe that because they aren’t called or calling someone else “nigger” on a regular basis, that there’s no racism. Because they can buy houses and get jobs, everyone who doesn’t look like them can, too.

Sort of like my family, who thought that my living in their house would make me “white enough” News flash: it didn’t.

These are the people who whine about Historically Black Colleges and Universities because they think they’re “black only”. They’re not, of course, and white students qualify for those AA (Affirmative Action) scholarships because in that context, they’re the “minorities”. But let’s not let sanity intrude, shall we? It’s just exemplary of the lengths people will go to justify their bigotry while claiming to be “colorblind”.

Back on BART, Mr. Fundypants has taken to looking at me like a puppy he expected to lick him that is contentedly chewing on his oozing neck-stump. He finally put up his hands and said, “Could you please just not talk about abortion anymore?”

Reminding him that he brought it up over my strenuous objections, I smiled sadly and said, “You first”.

Moments Worth Preserving

By Badphairy


I want to bronze this moment. My brother (the second eldest) is gloating about Hillary’s primary loss in “the whitest state in America” (Iowa). This is de rigeur in my family. However, I’m hearing “Go BarackO” in my ear. From my brother. The Marine. The lifelong Republican voter. He’s “voting for change” as I peel my jaw off the floor.

I’m not really sure how to take this. I’m not sure who I’m voting for, but I never thought I’d be discussing an election like this in my lifetime.

By the way, I am vaguely sickened by the way the media keeps portraying this as “the woman vs. the black” as if there is nothing to them but their labels. On this particular day, should we not be assessing candidates by the contents of their characters, not the color of their skin or the presence (or absence) of meat curtains?

Back to my brother, I’m just feeling weirded out by his support for Obama. It’s not as though I haven’t spent years attempting to convince the male members of my family that voting Republican didn’t necessarily float all boats equally. I got the standard WASP reply, i.e. ”I don’t actually care about other people’s boats. I care about my boat. Now STFU and scrub my floor”.

We did go on to scream at each other until we agreed that HillDawg can’t be BarackO’s Veep because it would lose him the support of cross-voting conservatives. He assured me there are some. I’d like pictures, names, and addresses, please.

I was interested primarily because I’ve rarely been able to have conversations like this in my family. Most of my family can’t or won’t “discuss.” They just scream loudest about how great the Republicans are and then retreat into pissy butthurtitude. In fact, I told one of them the housing bubble wouldn’t last and to prepare for the coming downturn, three years ago.

Not only didn’t he listen, I’m sure that now he would conveniently have no memory of said conversation. After all, what do Democrat commies understand about economics? I never thought my brother would be any different. Yet, here I am honestly inquiring what it is about BarackO that fires him up so.

I never really got an answer in that conversation. But he called me back. He said Americans are so complacent about their privileges that it sickened him. He’s seen fourteen year old girls in Asia selling themselves to his buddies to put rice on the family table, while we get all freaked out that our fourteen year olds aren’t doing enough extra credit to impress the Princeton Admissions Dept.

I may not agree with him about everything, but it’s damned hard to disagree with that. Maybe it’s time to put someone in power who understands that.

Who Let HillDawg Out?

I realize that Barack Obama is a personable man, an educated and gifted orator, and one of the few dedicated AND so-far-honest pols America has produced. Yes, we should get down and kiss the boots he pulled up himself with by their well-worn bootstraps.

But I gotta give a shout out to the HillDawg’s press secretary/speechwriters for the punchlines she was delivering during the last debate. “This pantsuit is asbestos” and the very best “They aren’t attacking me because I’m a woman, they’re attacking me because I’m ahead”. I think Bill wrote that one.

I didn’t get to see it of course, because I don’t have cable. IMHO, there’s something very wrong about restricting the electoral process to those who can afford the monthly bill from your choice of craptastic cable giants. It would be different if there were a “good” company, but all I have noticed is that perhaps one of them sucks slightly less than gravity. But I digress.

I know, I know, I’ve heard it all. She’s too corporate, she’s a liar, we don’t need a dynasty (she’s the son of which hereditary king, again?), she’s more of the same.

You know what? I remember what “the same” was when her hubby was in power. “The same” meant raising taxes to….pay our bills! What a thought! Fiscal conservatism from a Democrat, and frankly the only fiscal conservatism we’ve had for the last 16 years.

Let’s dust off Ronald Reagan’s (anybody remember him?) famous question, “Are you better off than you were ten years ago?” Did you cringe? Think HARD about that.

Rather than whining and playing the feminazi card, she got down in the mud with her pink Tonka truck and moved some dirt. Her timing was impeccable, her delivery was on the mark, and the applause, cheers and laughter were well deserved.

She is standing under the door marked DNC Leader over which is poised a tipping bucket of D-challenger mud; there are several slings hanging from the door handle. I like a good fight as well as the next person, but shouldn’t we be honing the messages that will differentiate the parties from each other? I just see the “kill her with fire” approach as being ultimately unuseful and yet another example of how internecine division tends to equal conquering by the other side.

By all means, differentiate yourselves by policy, by wonkery, by shoe color if you have to (oops, that will give women an edge, won’t it?) but differentiating yourselves by how loudly you can scream at the front-runner seems self-defeating. After all, the only reason to engage in such behavior is to BECOME the front-runner, right? If the only way you can “win” is to be a bigger asshole than the next three guys, well, you know what that will ensure us as an electorate? That we elect the person capable of the most assholery.

I don’t think that’s a direction in which we want to go any further. In fact, it’s how we got Luke Dumbwaiter and Darth Cheney.

I think it’s time for a change, don’t you?

Badphairy Writes Her Local Politician

By Badphairy

I used to be so proud to be your constituent. I gladly and loudly agreed that Barbara Lee Speaks for Me.

Then I realized you were one of the people being eagerly conned by Your Black Muslim Bakery.

Did you really believe that all it takes to be successful and above-board are expensive suits, short haircuts, and luxury cars? Did you really believe that lack of financial oversight was some kind of gift? In fact, I don’t have any idea what you believed, but whatever it was, you believed in such great error that it cost innocent people their lives.

When the police are afraid of a bunch of twenty-somethings such that they won’t even write them tickets, there is something incredibly wrong.

When the police don’t even bother to follow up any crime less dangerous than a murder, there is something incredibly wrong.

When the entire city continues its slow-motion slide into a morass of lawlessness regardless of who it elects to office, there is something so wrong that it threatens democracy in a substantial and basic way.

I don’t know what the answer is, for Oakland, and I greatly fear the elected officials of Oakland don’t even know the right questions to ask.

I do know now, that the woman I thought was doing excellent work for Oakland, is far less excellent than I previously thought.

When you come up for election again, I will be taking a very detailed look at your opposition, since anyone who didn’t allocate money to, and pose for pictures with the Bey family will have an automatic edge.

What's got the Badphairy's hackles up? Here's a big hint.