Snark And Slavery Money (Are All The Whites Have Left)

Even when being assholes, some of my readers are golden - not PW golden, but still golden. Ladies and Germs, I give you "Howard":

"This guy says you are owed $1.5M. I have it on good authority that the check is in the mail."

And I have it on good authority the mails are notoriously slow, partially, because - like freedom and justice in America - blacks always have to wait for whites to "get it" first. 

“Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race,…We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” 

Oooh - took a nasty turn there. Anyway, check Howard's guy out - he's, like, an old school abolitionist out-of-his-time:

"Calculated MINIMUM reparation due to slave descendants: $1.5 million to each Black citizen of the USA

...The latter one-time payment would be easy for the USA to make,..."

Sure, too easy - some just don't wanna. They enjoy the little white supremacist jolt of power they get from calling us "whiners" too much, to consider us as legitimately aggrieved Americans. That would spoil their centuries of "fun" with us, having to put up with them and their personal insecurities, always on display.

"This is how we get movies in which white lawyers defend innocent black men (To Kill a Mockingbird, A Time to Kill). It's how we get romances — Jezebel, Gone With the Wind, Cold Mountain — that use the antebellum South and Civil War as backdrops but feature either the most entertaining black slaves or almost no slaves at all. It's how you get Mississippi Burning, a thriller about three murdered civil-rights activists in which even the one-dimensional racists have bigger speaking parts than any black person.

It's how you get Cry Freedom, a thriller about Steve Biko (Denzel Washington) that mostly locks Biko into flashbacks while a white journalist (Kevin Kline) tries to flee apartheid-era South Africa; a movie about the death of Medgar Evers that's focused on his assassin; Steven Spielberg legislative historical dramas about white men fighting over who owns black people and what it means to do so. It's how you spend 35 minutes hearing Christoph Waltz talk and talk in Django Unchained and get nervous that Quentin Tarantino momentarily forgot what his movie was called. 

 ...The power of McQueen's movie is in its declaratory style: This happened. That is all, and that is everything."

And then there's the whole issue of them being the problem to begin with. They can't admit that, any more than TV's Archie Bunker could, or Defense in the movie "Falling Down". That's why it took a black Englishman to make 12 Years a Slave:

With few exceptions, white Americans have never been willing to admit the truth of who and how they are to others, and - until Brad Pitt - they definitely haven't been finding the money for fact-finding tours, either.

This blog is called The Macho Response.

Whites - especially white women - are special people. We hear it all the time. They are told, before the entire world, they "deserve" things - things black women have to work a lifetime to dream about. Go to the racist outpost of France - white American women love it - everything's "the best!" Feeling good about themselves, historically, has been the most important activity white culture has ever known. 

As I've pointed out countless times, despite all the NewAge Western-Buddhist "be humble" talk, the architects of Manifest Destiny are never going to humble themselves. Even I-look-so-nice Ann Althouse is defiant about it - you can beg her and she'll never apologize for anything. (It's revealing the lesson Ann's taken from being attacked online is to aggressively exploit others for money - and toughen up - not to be more honest,...) So what does that say about the rest of you? That you're "easy to get along with"?

Hardly. It says you've always been more-than-willing to drive others to distraction, as a means to selfishly get your way, right and wrong be damned.

We're on to you - especially that "arrogant" Obama - isn't it ugly to see someone behave that way? Yeah, uh-huh, sure.

You're the experts.

But your hypocrisies don't matter anymore. Anyone can see, now, you're maintaining a facade. "The check is in the mail." Very cute.

Typical white guys:

Cracking each other up at parties,...

 

You're Minding Your Own Business - Turn On The T.V. - And Then Your Mind Is Becoming Your Own Business

I feel like I'm one of the few who seem to think we should be expecting something better, and different, from the kids of Boomers:

Both fathers have a common ancestor: Archie Bunker. David is crotchety and stubborn and just a little less racist than Crawford. Crawford shows up at the office and scuttles a business deal when he screams, before a group of Chinese investors, “The Chinese are a lovely and honorable people, but you can’t trust them! There’s a reason Shanghai is a verb!” David mistakes Warner’s wife, Camilla (Vanessa Lachey), for a maid, just because she is Latina.

For a show to pull off this kind of character, it helps to make clear that it does not share his worldview—that it wants the audience to laugh at how racist the racist is being and not just laugh racistly. Dads fails pretty catastrophically on this count because the two guys who should be rolling their eyes or, more realistically, panicking about all the dumb things their dads are saying, are too busy being racist themselves, though it’s not clear the writers know just how questionably the boys are behaving. For that business meeting with the Chinese investors, Warner and Eli have their employee Veronica (Brenda Song) dress up like a “sexy Asian” so she can tee-hee provocatively at their prospective clients, which is the same kind of fresh satire found on Pax Dickinson’s Twitter feed and ends up helping the guys’ business quite a bit. The episode ends with some family bonding: the two sons, their two dads, and Veronica joking about how small Asian men’s penises are.

All over the airwaves. With a nice healthy promotion campaign and everything. Because we've got money for that. That's what we got. That's all we got.

And - cherry on top - it stars the Scientologist, Giovanni Ribisi, which should speak to the great insights that shit delivers.

Fools:

And my apologies to "whites of good faith" (as that old saying goes) faced with their country doing this to them, too.

We're trapped, y'all,...

This IS A Man's World (But It Wouldn't Mean Nothing,...)

"Awww, geez, will you look at this!" (Wow - I'm sure that's the absolute best Archie Bunker impression you're ever going to get from a black guy - and, as far as I'm concerned, worth the effort of clicking over all by itself. Now get out of here, before you read further and get disappointed,...) That wasn't the sound of  me discovering a new cult movie on the way (with public support!) but of my heart crumbling when I read this  - and before I almost ran into the street, naked and hysterical, in total despair over the injustice of it all:

“More than a THIRD of women worldwide will experience physical or sexual violence at some point in their lives.”

That's a headline. A startling headline. Drove me nuts. Thanks a lot, Daily Mail! 

I started hyperventilating, and yelling "Oh My God! Oh My God! Oh My God!" over and over again, before deciding, right then and there, I've got to do something.

Then, I don't know why, I flashed my life - and what a man's life is like generally - and I started to laugh out loud, like a crazy person, as I realized the media had almost suckered me again.

I used to have a friend who said feminists got beat up because "they don't listen!" That's, mostly, the same reason men do. Somebody's being unreasonable and - bullheadedness being a dare - forced somebody's hand. Right and wrong ("Where's my fucking money?") not weak or strong, bigger or smaller, or whatever other self-serving nonsense feminists try to get us to focus on (somebody's always bigger, idiots, that's why you hone your skills,...). If women can box, wrestle, fight wars, be ruthless CEOs - or ride a fucking croc - women can get their asses kicked without it being a major fucking media story.

It's too bad The Daily Mail (or any other publication) never includes stats on how many of those violence-seekers were in the wrong and responsible for their situation. That would definitely shift the needle on how much sympathy they get. 

And how desirable they've become.

When feminism is complete, and men view women the same way they see weasely/shifty little untrustworthy guys - used car salesmen, drinking too much, and spouting manipulative bullshit - THAT's when women will finally be on an equal footing with men.

But (and this is where your disappointment kicks in) women's equality, too, will be men's doing - for having gained the proper post-feminist perspective for conflict:

 "Are you really going to let that asshole fuck with you?"

I'm A Ramblin' Man (Part I Of A Dialogue On Everything)

Howdy, Folks, how's everybody doing? I'm alright. Yeah, seriously, I'm fine. Having been pushed into a corner, politically, culturally, whatever, I'm starting to find that I like it here. I've come to think it's still part of my, long, post-divorce transition:

When I was in my marriage, I was part of something larger than myself - cared about others and all that - but, now that I'm no longer "hooked-up" to my wife's NewAge freak show, my views reflect it and I'm comfortable.

I've been called a "bigot" a lot lately, which is cool, because - as someone raised where putting others down for fun is part of our subculture - "bigot" is probably one of the lamest accusations anyone's ever leveled at me. As the late, great Christopher Hitchens labeled them, it's the kind of thing "soft-centered types" throw around, thinking they can hurt you because they imagine you're as weak-kneed (and weak-minded) as they are.

Not.

Though, I must admit, this use of the word "bigot" has puzzled me lately since - like the word "nigger" - I've always coupled bigotry with ignorance. To me, a bigot is someone who talks out of his ass against shit he or she doesn't understand. But those throwing "bigot" around now - Mitt Romney supporters - have always known far less about him and Mormonism than I, which was confusing. At least, until I read this line from Hitchens:

I don’t think I would want to vote for a Scientologist or a Moonie for high office, or indeed any other kind, and I think attempts to silence criticism of such outfits are the real evidence of prejudice."

Actually, that's not exactly true. It was that line, plus a reply from an Althouse reader (on Hitchens calling Mormonism "One of the most egregious groups operating on American soil.") that did it. Here's the reply:

Considering that comes from the pen of Christopher "Mother Teresa was a sexually frustrated masochist who gloried in squalor and filth and fellated Third World dictators" Hitchens, I'll pass on what he thinks is egregious.

Got that? Hitchens' scholarship on Mother Theresa, and any other issue, was simply pushed aside in favor of what this person wants to "believe" - in other words, total NewAge thinking. Now things were falling into place:

The prejudiced "soft-centered types," who don't care about facts, are throwing around a tired accusation regarding things they know nothing about.

Should I be bothered about that? I don't think so. NewAge wouldn't exist without it. And - when it comes to me being the target of such attacks - there's really nothing "new" there. As I have said many times, stupidity is the currency of the culture right now, and the larger culture is definitely NewAge.

For instance, if you separate "bigotry" from ignorance, as my attackers seem to be doing, then being a bigot isn't such a bad thing. Here's the definition of "bigot":

A person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

I can live with that. I'm openly a cult critic. Considering most people know little-to-nothing about the subject, I am almost forced to appear "obstinately or intolerantly devoted" to my own thoughts on the subject. I mean, what else am I going to do? Defer to those who are "so open-minded their brains fall out"? Can't happen.

Plus it puts me in good company. Archie Bunker used to be Exhibit 'A' for what I thought was a bigot, but nowadays, he's the poster child for far-reaching conservative thought:

What's not to like about that? Everybody loves Archie - even if they didn't at the time he was on TV. (According to Wikipedia, "In 2005, Archie Bunker was listed as number 1 on Bravo's 100 Greatest TV Characters, defeating runners-up such as Ralph Kramden, Lucy Ricardo, Arthur Fonzarelli, and Homer Simpson.") If anything, Archie's example reminds me people don't like to accept the truth, immediately, when it's presented - something I knew already.

There are a few other "bigots" saying the same things I am - after I say them - so I don't feel too alone. Michael Wolff of The Guardian (U.K.) recently did a column on Rupert Murdoch and Scientology that, over a week later, makes the exact same connections I did with Mitt and Mormonism. Of course, that's an anomaly, as most do it piecemeal, unable to put all the pieces together as I do. For instance, today, there was an article stating Brad Pitt was almost a Scientologist. Now, if you're a reader of this blog and have followed Pitt's adulterous "spiritual journey" as I have - through his fascination, say, with the cult leader Ken Wilber - is this really news? No - if you read this blog and understand NewAge, it not only fits perfectly with who Brad Pitt is, but it would be a surprise to discover he hadn't looked (or almost been sucked) into it. Brad Pitt, like most people, is NOT a critical thinker - he's "spiritual."

Which is why, politically, we are where we are. Like that Althouse commenter I mentioned, above, it's all about feelings and "beliefs" for most people, and things are coming apart because such garbage in/garbage out "thinking" has no bearing on reality - except to compel it to destroy anyone or anything that doesn't cooperate:

Remember Global Warming? It used to be all the rage, until reality went on a rampage against it, and now? Somehow, science isn't cooperating with the deceitful "scientists" who once "believed" they had it (and us) pinned down.

And so it goes.

Along with NewAge culture, part of the problem, I think, is the fact there's a velvet rope around who gets to to be heard out there. This occurred to me a few days ago, as I was listening to NPR, and they had Mike Huckabee come on to talk politics. I thought, Mike Huckabee? Do we really need to hear more from him? Is "The Huck" going to bring any new insights to what we already know - or is he just going to peddle pablum as always? He peddled pablum,…and it's the same everywhere else I looked:

The same names, pumping the same nonsense, to the same audiences expecting the same thing.

BTW - I've been listening to NPR in the car for a change, but there is none. As I said, I found Mike Huckabee on Left-wing radio just as I do on Right-wing radio, and that's the problem - it's Mike Huckabee (or someone like him) all the time, everywhere, and no other views are allowed.

What we have here is conventional wisdom, and the latest line, amongst those "soft-centered types" is that this tame-but-deceptive political race is "getting ugly." But - since the conversation stays within the range of these regular guests - I don't buy what they're selling. If this was true, Hot Air couldn't write a sentence like this:

In a palette-cleanser for a slow newsday Sunday BuzzFeed takes us back 40 years to the fashion nightmare that was my youth.

Bad 70's fashion? Astrology pants? Thanks a lot for that (I don't know what Hot Air is anymore, now that they've brought The Ham onboard,…) But, more to the point, how can there be "a slow newsday Sunday" when it's supposedly gotten so damned ugly out there?

Give me a break,...