What? He was just kidding…
The true colors of a certain group of Americans are coming into ever-clearer focus through an almost daily litany of public comments. Look at this beaut from a GOP activist out of South Carolina, who has some thoughts about the genetic relationship between an escaped gorilla and our first lady. But it’s okay, right? Since he only meant it as a joke. And he’s so sorry if he offended anybody. And now that he’s apologized, everyone can go on about their business guilt free in that Sunday-confession-whole-bunch-of-Hail-Marys sort of way.
I’m guessing he’s actually sorry he got caught and not at all sorry about what he said. But thanks to a publicized screen-grab of the indecent status update on his Facebook account, and–dagnabbit!–the poor bastard has no choice but to make the apologies sound heartfelt, no matter how much teeth grinding he has to endure.
People: We must be vigilant when it comes to white right-wingers who perceive themselves to be increasingly marginalized. These people walk among us, work with us, pass us in the produce section at the grocery store. I’ve seen them. They lurch toward me wide-eyed, with arms outstretched to touch my kid’s hair without asking.
Call or write your representatives
Here is a very short and very clear description of how Big Pharma and Big Insurance companies are going to undermine the public option in American health care. If we don’t speak out on this now, and speak out very loudly, they are going to continue to ream us. And if this article isn’t enough to make you pick up the phone, The New England Journal of Medicine reported this week that insurance companies (both here in the US and abroad) hold 4.5 billion dollars of tobacco company stock. That’s right: They have a vested interest in people getting, being and staying sick. Oh, and this means they have double lobbying power in congress.
Please. Pick up the phone.
Make your voice heard.
Can we all just take a deep breath or is that simply too dangerous at this juncture?
I’m beginning to think I’m the only one left on the planet who isn’t completely engulfed in panic over The New Flu Pandemic. Don’t get me wrong: There are things about it that are disconcerting: Like everyone else, I don’t want my kid to get sick and I don’t want to get sick.
Admittedly, when I’ve allowed myself to dwell in that cordoned off yet inventive place within my head, I’ve managed to create a number of dreadful future scenarios that mimic José Saragamo’s Blindness. An all-encompassing outbreak of anything is not something I’d like to experience. Unless that outbreak is people being overwhelmingly kind to each other for no fucking explainable reason whatsoever, in which case, I’d be licking handrails and shopping cart handles and eating my daughter’s dropped raisins off the bathroom floor at the zoo. Which is huge for me because I hate raisins.
CNN ran the following headlines on their website tonight, in this in exact order:
- Specter move puts Dems close to magic number
- Face mask demand surges, but do they work?
- Regular flu has killed thousands in 2009
- Why has swine flu killed only in Mexico?
- Why swine flu scares us
- CNN answers your swine flu FAQs
- At least 4 die in California tour-bus crash
I glanced over this list of fear-inducing headlines and couldn’t help but wonder how many of the four victims of the tour-bus crash spent their last days/hours/minutes/seconds fretting about the Swine Flu. Using all the people I’ve spoken to since Sunday night as a sample size from which to extrapolate data, I’d hypothesize that at least three of the four now-deceased passengers were consumed with worry. My point being, what’s the point?
The way I see it, there really isn’t much we can do about this situation besides wash our hands a lot, stay home if we get sick and not eat mishandled raisins off the damp tile floors of public loos. Oh, and don’t go to Mexico.
Poor Mexico. My heart is breaking for Mexico.
And P.S.
“My girlfriend…she sometimes claims I’m racist, so we have this running joke where if I meet a black person…whether that’s on the basketball court or at a party, I say “Hey…I have a new black friend, I can’t be racist.” -Josh Board, San Diego Weekly Reader, April 8, 2009
Hahahaha! Isn’t that funny? Hahahahaha. Haha. Ha.
(And no, I’m not providing links because Board doesn’t deserve the traffic. I know those of you who might be interested are savvy enough to find what you need.)
The San Diego Reader endorses racism
Josh Board is a writer (if he can be called that) for The Reader, another local San Diego paper. He sent me some fan mail earlier this month saying he thought I was a great addition to CityBeat. We chatted back and forth for a minute, during which time I politely outed myself as a vehement critic of a particular piece he’d written in March. He didn’t seem too phased and continued to compliment my writing and also commented on my “cute kid” (he must have looked at the pics here). He subsequently referred to Ruby as “him” and “he” but it doesn’t much matter as it all seems completely disingenuous now.
Yesterday, on the blog he writes for The Reader, Board attacked a recent CityBeat editorial. He then sent a link to our editor, Dave Rolland, who sent it to a number of the CB writers. I, of course, responded to everyone in the string, calling Board out on his nonsensical, racist diatribe (I have called him on his sexism before, too) and his complete lack of ability to weave coherent sentences together. Then I suggested that he educate himself about racism by reading Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria?, by Beverly Daniel Tatum. He had some suggestions for me, too, in an email that he removed from the string and sent only to me:
You should try finding (or writing) a book about why black kids sit in cars, with their stereos blasting, as if they think everyone else wants to hear 50 Cent. Or, why they sit in movie theatres making noise, talking on cell phones or at the screen, as if they are Chris Rock.
I’m sure you’ll get to deal with all that fun, when your little one grows up.
(read Freakanomics, they talk about how adopted kids are never as smart…because they get the intelligence from the folks that gave them up).
So, good luck with that.
Geez, now that I think about it, it’s probably good you couldn’t have kids. It’s one less idiot that has your genes in this world.
J
This man is employed by The Reader.
Please consider this the next time you pick up the publication.
Outrage
Today I’m recommending you read this open letter to AIG. It was cathartic reading it, so it must have been cathartic writing it. Melanie put a breathtaking human face to the story and now, I’m going to add another one:
I like her ending, only I wouldn’t have been so polite as to use asterisks. I’m too blinded by rage to even locate the asterisk key when I think about the futures stolen by these unscrupulous, relentless crooks who are now suing the US government for…back…taxes…
Mental Health Break
This is NexactlySFW, but only because of the language (just turn down the V a little bit). And it’s also probably not very safe for any feminists without a sense of humor. But if you’re pissed off this morning because you learned, during day-care-drop-off, that post-doc fellows at UCSD pay less than half what you pay for the very limited parking or if, in the very first email you checked today, you were belittled by a man whose sense of self-importance is bigger than the national deficit, this will right your mood again.
(H/T to my very first college boyfriend.)
I *am* the Don Music of the modern day keyboard
My computer karma continues to deteriorate, going from worse to unbearably awful. I can’t fathom what I did in another life that has caused me to suffer so in this one, but I must have been pretty bad with the abacus or something.
I got my laptop back on Thursday night, complete with a new hard drive but with all extraneous software removed–including photoshop–rendering it useless for anything more than writing and Fakebooking, the evil online activity that takes the art of procrastination to a whole new level.
Given the new limits of my laptop, I downloaded all the photos I’d taken on Friday night to an external hard drive connected to our desktop computer, the final frontier in my photo processing. And before I could begin editing them and give thanks to the computer gods for having all of my machines in working order, the desktop quit on me. I’ve tried re-booting, I’ve tried zapping the P-Ram (going the two-bong and also the three-bong routes) but: Nada. I’m not allowed past the very first grey page, with the grey apple and the little grey start-up wheel spinning like a fan in taunting eternity.
I very nearly popped a blood vessel while screaming at Sam and now I’m afraid there’s a greater possibility I’ll be served with divorce papers on our anniversary this Tuesday, instead of getting the tattoo I want. After I blew, he high-tailed it out the door to pick up some Thai food, knowing that part of my angst was rooted in low blood sugar and that at least this much he could control. While he was gone, I enjoyed the remainder of my meltdown in private.
I know where Congress can get some cash, but quick:
Revoke the tax-free status on all churches immediately. In fact, in face of this current crisis, I suggest they levy a hefty back tax—plus interest—for their endorsements in 2000 and 2004.
This Sunday, 33 pastors will be endorsing candidates from their pulpits and here’s what one of them has to say:
“I’m going to talk about the un-biblical stands that Barack Obama takes. Nobody who follows the Bible can vote for him,” said the Rev. Wiley S. Drake of First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park. “We may not be politically correct, but we are going to be biblically correct. We are going to vote for those who follow the Bible.”
Who are these people and how did they get so stuck back there on the evolutionary chain? Oh…! Right! There’s no such thing as evolution. Just ask Sarah Palin. She’ll tell ya!
People: I could totally be Vice President. And this would be my running mate:
Democrats: Heads up their asses since 2000
Bush threatens a veto so the Dems capitulate? Again? With the excuse that public opinion favors off-shore drilling?!? Give me a break. “Public opinion” also favors creationism, so maybe our representatives in congress should take a step back from the ledge before relying too heavily on it as the barometer for decision making. I mean, what the fuck? How about studying the issue? How about looking at the facts? How about having a backbone? How about STANDING FOR SOMETHING?
I despise the Democrats only slightly less than I despise the Republicans.