Tag Archives: seriously?

“No, Newt, You’re the Racist” Thank goodness someone more elequont wrote this rebuttal…

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to the charge by some Republicans against the Supreme Court Nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, as being a racist against the white people, and specifically, white male people.

I first saw this charge when I was waiting to board the plane. (You know the CNN scrolling texts on the bottom that drive everybody crazy but, I have to admit it, was pretty useful when there was NO sound on!) I could NOT believe my eyes. But I was not surprised either.

In my head I was formulating all these rebuttals, clever comebacks, theories, arguments against charges of any type of Reverse Racism. The best I could come up with was: It is like the Royal Families complain about being prejudiced against because people are jealous of the privileges they enjoy.

Seriously? Give me a break!

Thank goodness for Vanity Fair. Here is again another article that I LOVE so much that I want to print it out and eat it whole. I really should be working since I am buried by projects that are all due YESTERDAY. But I need to get this off my chest before I explode into a pile of, YES, non-white, mess…

No, Newt, You’re the Racist by Michael Hogan (May 27, 2009)

Mr. Hogan, I assume who is white and male (NOT that there is anything wrong with that…), managed to deliver a rebuttal against this utter nonsense in an even-handed, non-didactic, non-preachy way.

Digression: I also appreciate much the fact his article does not invoke White Guilt either, for nothing is more annoying to me than condescension and patronization born out of White Guilt. No, thank you very much, we have managed along quite well. We do not need to be rescued by a knight in shiny armor. Give me outright Racism any day ( Disclaimer: obviously, I understand VIOLENCE committed on the basis of racism is no joke. Here I am referring to TALKS. DISCOURSES.) When it is veiled in White Guilt, I am at a loss as to how to react to it.

Anyway, the best quote from the article is as follows, although I do hope you read the entire thing if you have stayed with my rant so far…

The reason so few sensible people take [any charge of reverse racism] seriously is that there is no effective anti-white discrimination in America or, for that matter, the world. Being white is almost universally easier than being any other color, just as being male is almost universally easier than being female. (If you’re white, male, and still angry, the problem is you.)

Nicely done. Thank you.

If you happen to be white (in appearances) and you cannot see the implied privileges that come with your skin color, here is a great article/exercise that may resonate with you:

“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh in 1990. Yes, it is decades old. But hey, some things never change… or at least, not much.

p.s. Once again, the comments steal the show and become the proof for the importance of writing the article being commented on in the first place.

Michael Hogan, poor guy, he’s being pummeled and maligned in the comment section. It is rather scary and disturbing what was said in those comments. I wish I hadn’t read them because now I am officially pissed. And scared at the same time. And disturbed. And dispirited.

Utah Senator Butt-Arse calls Gays immoral. And polygamy is? Where is the Big Love?

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No flaming please.  I didn’t mean to compare Gays to Polygamists.  But if Utah Senator Chris Butt-Ars (A-ha!) has his right to speak what is on his mind, to spout garbage based on stereotypes and gross generalization and nothing else, despite being an elected public official, then I have the right to generalize the State of Utah as still the hotbed of polygamy, and then to generalize polygamy as the Pantheon of immorality.

Hey, it is a free country, right?  Butt-Ars’s Republican colleagues in the Senate seem to believe so.

Here is the gist:

In an interview for a documentary film, “Butt-Ars called gays ‘the greatest threat to America’ and likened them to Muslim radicals. He said homosexuals lack any morals and want special rights.  ‘It’s the beginning of the end,’ Buttars said. ‘Oh, it’s worse than that. Sure. Sodom and Gomorrah was localized. This is worldwide.'”

Butt-ars has been stripped of his chairmanships by Senate Republicans after a closed-door meeting brought about by the outcry, and his Republican colleagues were outraged and they are standing behind him.  (I wish I had loyal friends like these…)  Butt-ars likewise refused to apologize, but rather relished the pride of taking a stand for his own beliefs.  (Imagine: what if we all had showed respect for the slave owners who took the stand for their own beliefs?  Hmmm…)

Below is the lengthy quote from The Salt Lake Tribune because you simply cannot make this stuff up!

“I want the citizens of Utah to know that the Utah Senate stands behind Senator Buttars right to speak, we stand behind him as one of our colleagues and his right to serve this state,” said Senate President Michael Waddoups, R-Taylorsville. “He is a senator who represents the point of view of many of his constituents and many of ours. We agree with many of the things he said. . . . We stand four square behind his right [to say what he wants].”

Buttars, R-West Jordan, said he “totally” disagrees with his removal from the panel. In a statement he plans to post on the Senate’s Web page, he said the action was an attempt to “shy away from controversy.” And, he said, he would not apologize for his comments.

“I don’t have anything to apologize for,” he said.

Wow.  Are you kidding me?  Is this for real?  In this day and age?  I must be incredibly naive to be astounded by these news lately so easily.

This and the Cartoon from the New York Post yesterday are reminders that we should not be complacent about “How far we have come along” despite the victory of having elected the first African American POTUS.  Baby, we’ve still got a long way to go…

“When it comes right down to it,” Buttars said in his statement, “I would rather be censured for doing what I think is right, than be honored by my colleagues for bowing to the pressure of a special-interest group that has been allowed to act with impunity.”

The New York Post chimp cartoon – Not at all funny no matter how you look at it…

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New controversy alert! February is not over yet, and as many of us have held our breath fearfully awaited, the FIRST racist cartoon about our FIRST Black Prez is out! My fellow Americans, once again, you do not disappoint…

So the unfortunate New York Post published this cartoon today and also on its website.

Take a deep breath, and be honest with yourself: what is your first reaction?

Perhaps only a kid who is not yet aware of racial stereotypes, historical racial relationships, and cultural symbols embedded in the American Psyche would not see it, but most of us do:

OMG! Are they kidding me? Is it what I think it is? Is the cartoonist referring to President Obama as a chimp shot dead? In this day and age? Is there irony in this? A sarcasm attacking racism or something but I simply cannot decipher it somehow?

Because:

1. Our Prez is Black. There is no any other way of saying it. He is.

2. The stimulus bill is his first legislative effort (and I thank him for it!!) and there are a lot of rumblings and grumblings about it

3. The cops as pictured are White. There is no any other way of saying it. They are.

Please tell me there is more to this cartoon. It has got to be. It is the 21st century, people, and we just elected our first Black President. Many are even thinking of abolishing the African American History Month because it does not seem like we need it any more.

Ha ha. Not funny. I want to cry.

The trusted Rev. Al Sharpton came out immediately and protested loudly:

“The cartoon in today’s New York Post is troubling at best given the historic racist attacks of African-Americans as being synonymous with monkeys. One has to question whether the cartoonist is making a less than casual reference to this when in the cartoon they have police saying after shooting a chimpanzee that “Now they will have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill.”

“Being that the stimulus bill has been the first legislative victory of President Barack Obama (the first African American president) and has become synonymous with him it is not a reach to wonder are they inferring that a monkey wrote the last bill?”

One can argue that you are being a racist yourself if any time a monkey is depicted, you immediately think of the signal = signified : monkey = African Americans

Isn’t that a racist way of perceiving the world? Aren’t you walking around with some colored glasses?

Well, let’s be honest with ourselves. We all are aware of each other’s external appearances. There is no escaping it. And we are all aware of the deep-seated stereotypes about each other permeated throughout our collective cultural references. There is no escaping that either. (I was not born in this country, and I have been taught to be aware of these in the years I have been in the U.S. mostly just by watching TV shows and movies, and trying to understand what the significance is in a lot of the cultural and social references…)

Because of this, the statement by New York Post’s Editor-in-Chief defending the cartoon seems rather weak:

“The cartoon is a clear parody of a current news event, to wit the shooting of a violent chimpanzee in Connecticut. It broadly mocks Washington’s efforts to revive the economy. Again, Al Sharpton reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist.”

Is Col Allan from Mars? Born two centuries ago? There is simply no excuse.

Yes, I get his argument: the cartoon allegedly refers to the “breaking story” about the Chimp shot dead in Stamford, CT, which happens to be the headline story in NY Post.

(Is there any wonder nobody really reads it? Asking a question such as “Why did the chimp go berzerk?” is just plain stupid. Why? I’ll tell you why: he was a chimp. If you are going to keep a chimp as a pet in the city and take him on walks in busy streets, yeah, you bet your ass he’s going to go berzerk. If not today, some day!)

But this requires the readers to:

1. Know about the chimp story (which I had no inkling of since it has not been twittered about…)

2. Immediately infers the caption “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill” as a comment on the stimulus being so dumb that “even a monkey can write it.”

IF I have to jump two steps ahead in order to laugh at a cartoon, then the cartoon is NOT funny to begin with. Rule of thumb for telling a joke: If you have to explain it, it is NOT good. So DON’T TELL IT!

I cannot help but have this gnawing feeling that perhaps this is exactly what they wanted: getting us pissed. Perhaps, New York Post has won since I am sure their website is getting the record high number of hits, ever.

Gawker.com collected 10 cartoons by Sean Delonas. Make your own judgement.

Happy Valentine’s Day. And here is a necklace to remind you of your big fat behind…

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Hey, honey, I shrunk your ass!

Here it looks like a snake. Awesome!

Is it just me. or does not the entire jewelry line based on Jane Seymour’s Open Heart design remind anybody else of a buttock?

The first time we saw the commercial on TV, either from Jared or Kay Jewelers, purveyors of cheesy jewelries, my boys cried out, at the same time, “It looks like a butt!” And I had to agree with them.

So nobody at those jewelry stores, when they were just looking at the designs, BEFORE they turned the design into actual goods, saw that and said, “Maybe we should look into something else…” ?

So, maybe it is really just me then.

Latest Poll: Less than 40% of Americans believe in Evolutionism… Wonder whether Canada fares better

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as they have more Democrats and Liberals than we do?

This is the latest poll by Gallup this month, in honor of Darwin’s 200th birthday, an update from the Economist Daily Chart that I posted a week ago: data for that chart was from 2006, and at that time, less than 50% of the Americans believed in Evolution…. What happened??!! We all collectively took the stupid pill?

Well, I am not sure what an “honor” the result would be. Darwin is probably turning in his grave.

Summary of the survey findings:

“On the eve of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, a new Gallup Poll shows that only 39% of Americans say they ‘believe in the theory of evolution,’ while a quarter say they do not believe in the theory, and another 36% don’t have an opinion either way. These attitudes are strongly related to education and, to an even greater degree, religiosity.”

What bothers me the most, or surprises me the most, is the fact that only 86% of the people holding a postgraduate degree correctly answered the question: “Can you tell me with which scientific theory Charles Darwin is associated?”

One can argue that whether you believe in Evolution is a matter of heart, which is subjective, and should have nothing to do with how many books you have read (esp. if you have been reading all the wrong books… and the definition of “wrong” varies by which side you are on…) But the theory with which Darwin is associated? This is basic knowledge, people! If you cannot answer this question correctly, you should march back to your alma mater and give them back your diploma!

Fewer than 50% Americans believe in the Evolution Theory… How many of the rest believe in aliens?

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Numbers (or Bars) speak louder than words. Draw any conclusion based on your own bias and convictions. And don’t send me any hate mail, but this visual impact is too much for me to bear. I feel dizzy. Would be interested to see how this affects the government’s and Bill Gates’ professed belief and vowed actions to improve science standards for education in the U.S.

Seriously, if you have any gripes, sign in to the Economist and post your comment there. As of now, there are 161 comments: obviously this is a topic that is close to home, to people’s hearts and brains. (But if you ask me, it is obvious which side has more brains than the other…)

Now that I have a few moments to calm myself down from the initial impact, come to think of it, the number is not that surprising considering that this is the land that proudly hosts the Creation Museum as a historical and scientific institution. Let’s be thankful that we are still behaving better than Turkey! Woohoo!

Courtesy of The Economist‘s Daily Chart (February 5, 2009)

Bush commutes sentences of 2 Border Patrols – Finally, after 8 years, W did something that I approved of…

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I am sure a lot of my liberal friends are going to treat me like a traitor for saying this, but I am glad that the two men, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, will be out of jail in March, without having to serve the 11-year and 12-year sentences that they were given. There are already a lot of outcry and celebration in the blogsphere: On the Huffington Post, most of the comments expressed outrage at this “anti-immigrant” gesture, and conversely, on the “white supremacy” or self-proclaimed “red-state-leaning” oriented blogs (I am not going to provide links here, just google on your own and you will see…) , this act was celebrated as confirmation that white people won.  Eh, first of all, I believe that Mr. Ramos is not white…

I heard of this story last year when my husband got a hold of the wonderful book series “The Best American Writing” for the year 2008 (which by the way is a series worth looking forward to every year, making Christmas all the much better for grown-ups!), and inside The Best American Crime Reporting 2008 , is an extensively researched and well-written article by Pamela Colloff, published in the September 2007 issue of Texas Monthly.  Here is the reprint found on the US Attorney website.  Read this before you make any judgement!

It is hard not to feel bad for the two men once finishing reading the entire article.  The point, in my mind, is not whether they have shot an unarmed-man while he was running away, in the dark, but rather, the fairness in the sentencing of the two men for longer than a decade on the excuse of their violating bureaucratic procedures.  Anybody that is arguing the merit (or demerit) of the commutation of sentence from the perspective of immigration, whether pro- or anti-, is not looking at this issue rationally.

And how many people that are now outraged simply by the sensational headlines or out-of-context comments such as the one posted on Salon.com by Alex Koppelman:

“Bush commutes sentences of former Border Patrol agents – Anti-immigration forces won a partial victory Monday, as President Bush commuted the prison sentences of two of their heroes…”

Alex Koppelman published a long article on salon.com in January 2007 on this case as well which I was not aware of until just now.  He has a completely different take on this case: as a deliberate cover-up by the right wing and a transformation of criminals into folk heroes.  Guess I need to withhold my own judgement now too before I can make up my mind on this…

Why is life so complicated?

The good old “Good Samaritan Law” about to be overturned…

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I love California, in general. I love the people there. Liberals. Warm-hearted. Open-minded. Willing to listen to different opinions and considering uncommon alternatives. Thus go the stereotypes. But this is taking the liberal spirit a bit too far.

The California Supreme Court has ruled that good Samaritans can be sued for not being careful when they try to help a victim in an emergency. The case centers on a woman who is suing her co-worker who “dragged” her out of the crashed vehicle like a “rag doll”, causing permanent damage to her spinal cord. I feel for the victim, I do. But there will be huge ramification to the society as a whole if we ever allow a rescuer with honest good intentions to ever be sued for trying to save someone else’s life.

The Good Samaritan laws, or “The Good Samaritan Doctrine” as it is legally known, is a legal principle that prevents a rescuer who has voluntarily helped a victim in distress from being successfully sued for “wrongdoing”. Its purpose is to keep people from being so reluctant to help a stranger in need for fear of legal repercussions if they made some mistake in treatment.

This is insane. So now we have to tell our kids: Yes, of course, if you see someone in danger, you are going to try and help them out. BUT, NOT before you obtain their permission for saving their life first. Actually, that’s not good enough, because it could become a “You said, s/he said scenario.” You should have them write down their permission and sign before you save their life…

How ridiculous does this sound? The scene from the movie Hancock comes to mind:

Cliche: History repeats itself OR I am really really pissed

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Or is it?

From NPR:

“In 1979, Chrysler avoided collapse by getting $1.5 billion in loans from the government. Charles Hyde, professor of history at Wayne State University and author of Riding the Roller Coaster: A History of the Chrysler Corporation, says in return Congress insisted that the company come up with some $2 billion in cost-savings and concessions.”

I mean, is it a cliche if history DID repeat itself?

Or maybe not, since it seems that at the last bailout of Chrysler, the Gov. actually came out ahead (to the tune of $500 million). How about this time? People have changed in the last 3 decades. 30 years ago people did not grow up with such a sense of entitlement, corporate greed was not openly a norm, and personal responsibilities were taught and valued.

Fast forward to today. Ok, fine, Tuesday. The Big 3 Automakers’ CEOs flew on their own private jets, not ONE, but THREE, to Washington today to make the case for their needing to be rescued. Seriously? You can’t make this stuff up.

Here is more of this priceless gem from ABC:

“The CEOs of the big three automakers flew to the nation’s capital yesterday in private luxurious jets to make their case to Washington that the auto industry is running out of cash and needs $25 billion in taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy.

The CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler may have told Congress that they will likely go out of business without a bailout yet that has not stopped them from traveling in style, not even First Class is good enough.

All three CEOs – Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler – exercised their perks Tuesday by flying in corporate jets to DC. Wagoner flew in GM’s $36 million luxury aircraft to tell members of Congress that the company is burning through cash, asking for $10-12 billion for GM alone.”

I dig “Really? Really??” “Are you serious?!”

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I don’t understand why there was not more bluhaha around the AIG retreat. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, AIG brought all their top executives to St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, Calif for a week-long retreat. The $443,000 tab includes $23K for the Spa. Here is the breakdown for a vacation of the lifetime:

(See Washingtonpost.com for the full report)

Washingtonpost.com

Most of the attendees at the convention between Sept. 22 and Sept. 30 stayed in premium “pool view” rooms at the 400-room hotel, with 47-inch LCD TVs and marble bathrooms furnished with a “Deep Roman” bath and shower. The rate: $375 per night.

The group also booked 17 “ocean view” rooms, at $425 each, and one “presidential suite,” discounted from its usual $3,200 a night to $1,600.

Another $9,982 was spent on food and drinks at the StoneHill Tavern, the Monarch Bayclub, in-room dining and the lobby lounge; $6,939 on golf; $1,488 at the Vogue Salon; and $1,450 on no-show and cancellation fees.

An invoice dated Oct. 3 said AIG still owed the resort $40,543 in charges after a $402,701 deposit. The itemized bill does not show what executives specifically ordered at the spa and salon, but a look at the hotel’s spa menu shows 75-minute “intuitive massages” at $215 a pop (most of the executives spent $210 each for a spa treatment on Sept. 25) and men’s and women’s haircuts and styles starting at $50 and $75, respectively. Executives also spent $147,302 on banquets at the hotel and $23,380 at the Spa Gaucin, which features three-story waterfalls…”

The kick is, they went on the retreat IMMEDIATELY AFTER receiving the Fed’s Bailout package of $85 Billion.

Talk about reinforcing bad behaviours! And I got dirty looks from the storeckerk when I bought my child a lollipop after he threw a tantrum???

I cannot believe that there were not more reports on this. Weren’t people outraged? I surely am. I am utterly disgusted. Are people simply tired? Or have we been so thoroughly disgusted that we simply don’t want to talk about it any more? This fall has been great for SNL. You cannot make these stories and characters up. Most people weren’t alerted of this outrage until they saw the Weekly Update skit on SNL. (Fastforward to the 2:15 mark if you must…)

If I had written a story like AIG and the beyond-comprehension inconceivable shamelessness in a creative writing class, I would have been criticized for being contrive, buying into the archetype, for catering to cliches. This is real life! In one’s wildest creative dream, one would never have been able to conjure up a character such as Sarah Palin. I wonder whether people on SNL should consider voting for Republican this time to make sure that Palin stays in the limelight for four more years. With her in the White House, they can probably get rid of half of their writing staff and simply replay whatever is going on in real life.

I am beyond outraged. I am actually for once, speechless.