Pissed off

RE; New Hampshire Primary - Forgot the main rule – the pundits don’t know a god damn thing – they only try and sound like they do.

Well I’m pissed as hell – anyway I don’t like getting angry at people but sometimes sweet mercy.

Let me explain

Folks on my space post all sorts of things – they other day on the band site someone put up a bulletin on “I’m a bad American” now this is a piece of right wing spam that has been floating about the internet since 2000 when it first showed up on a site called Free Republic a web site only slightly less rancid with mouth breathing hate than the American Nazi Party’s site - anyway the bulletin there are all sorts of statements like

“When I order a Big Mac I want to do it in English”

This defies common sense – is there a place in the 50 states where you can’t order a big Mac in English? Jesus you don’t even have to speak human to get a big Mac. It’s entirely possible that the people behind the counter are speaking Spanish but what the hell is the problem with that? Nothing wrong with the language is there? Or are you worried that they are saying bad things about you in a language you don’t understand?

Sometime ago Fox (yes Fox) had a program where they put people into situations they would never be in normally – I forget the show it lasted about 11 minutes but there was one useful segment where a white guy (who all but admitted he was a bigot) was given the black like me treatment and went off into the world – the one moment that I remember was that he went to a night club and was he was surprised that none of the black comedians told white jokes. (this is on a par with Bill O’Rielly being surprised that the customers at Sylvia’s weren’t screaming ‘where’s my ice tea motherf-ker!’). And it gave a good insight into the bigot mind set – and the non-bigot mind set, a bigot obsesses about the “other” (gay, black, female, Martian) constantly – they are hypersensitive to their presence (i.e. the counter workers at McDonalds speaking Spanish). People who aren’t bigots don’t do that – we have better things to do with our time. We just want our Ice Tea Motherf-ker.

There’s another one “the only flag allowed should be the American Flag”

Again – no sense here – there are all those state flags, the Irish flags on St Patrick’s day the Italian Flags in Little Italy on Columbus day, the Greek Flags in my neighborhood on Greek independence day and all those Pro and college team flags and if memory serves Roman Catholic churches have a flag as well. Is this about banning them? No of course not – it’s a dog whistle for bigots who are afraid of Spanish speaking brown people.

So anyway when I find out this wasn’t a hack (and I was informed that ‘they’ – not specified who they were– want Spanish to be the primary language) I suggested the person calm down and not watch so much fox news and Glen Beck – they’d do a lot better, and suggested politely that the no-nothing bs being spouted in the mailing was the same sort of thing said about the Irish (my ancestors – and you should see the vicious cartoons Tomas Nast did about the Irish in New York in the 1850-60’s – he drew them so they all look like Apes) the Italians and the Poles (and pretty much everybody else as well. And it wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now.

Anyway the response was not as I had hoped – where at least you try and examine what you said on the chance you were wrong – (as I have been more times than I care to think about) – especially when it is about a piece of spam e-mail (which don’t have the best record of being accurate – if one came over the net that said it could prove that W was the result of Barbara Bush having consensual sex with a chimp, as much as I would like that to be true, I’d be pretty skeptical.) – So the person is off the island.

But I’d like to address the issue of ‘these are my opinions and if they offend you yadda yadda yadda” cause it’s bunk. I’m not easily offended – Jesus you can’t sing what I sing and be easily offended – but I am offended by this kind of mouth breathing nonsense – (no offense to the mouth-breathers out there) it’s 2008 people – can we maybe stop judging people by the idea that the more like you they are the better they are in if they don’t look like you they aren’t good. To quote the killer angels “the man who judges by the group is a pea wit”.

I mean really – can we stop obsessing about race for a while please – we really have much bigger problems to deal with right now than the levels of Melanin in skin.

Still that is America – and obsessing with race is what we do. Louisiana at one time had an elaborate system to keep track of your race so they could keep track of who was really white (if memory serves if you were 1/16 African American you were not white – boggles the mind really).

Well enough time wasted on this nonsense – tomorrow we have a gig and we got to the studio soon to finish up the record – I suspect doing my guitar solo will take up at least ½ the day.

Peace Love Brown people