Gated Communities

This absolutely unoffensive and in no way problematic marriage pledge being signed by the GOP Presidential candidates got me thinking about the people who actually buy into this stuff. Safe and secure in secluded subdivisions behind walls and manicured berms, they have apparently convinced themselves that Black kids had it better under Slavery than under Obama & that (in a line lifted from Dan Quayle) divorce & single-parenthood may very well be the root of all evil. Well, after thinking on this for a few minutes, I decided that I shouldn't think on it any longer, but before I came to that conclusion, I was inspired to write a song... the 1st one since my last December's Holiday song, "All I Want for Christmas is a Shotgun." You may recall it, but even if you don't, it doesn't really matter. Here's the new one: think Arlo Guthrie doing Texas Swing. This could have gone on w/ verses about SUVs, large gas grills, & Christopher Cross, but I chose to end it after 3, Enjoy.

I wanna live in a gated community
Where everyone looks and acts just like me
We’re all safe behind our seasonal flags
There ain’t no Spics and there ain’t no fags
The men are strong and the women don’t nag
In a gated community

We’ll all be safe in our gated community
Where things are always exactly as they seem to be
We’re red blooded Americans
Our lawn’s maintained by the Mexicans
Our beer is from the Canadians
In our gated community

We’ll get to heaven from our gated community
It’s just a matter of time, don’t you see?
We like to party out on our yacht
We read best-sellers but we don’t read a lot
We only hit the most touristy spots
From our gated community

W. W. P. G. D.?

So I'm sittin' in my office today, eatin' my chili & watchin' an A-Team episode as one does while eating lunch. It was the one where the coalition of bad guys hire an A-Team like group to destroy the A-Team. of course, systematically, Hannibal & the boys take them out & prevail. I was about 10 minutes into it when an old student stopped by to chat. We were talking about old TV shows since I was watching 1 & it turned out she was pretty fluent in classic TV & film. I was a bit surprised that I didn't know this already, but the conversation was going nicely. We started talking about newer shows like Pawn Stars & Storage Wars. I said that we'd been watching a lot of American pickers lately. She responded w/ "I don't like that show; they're always trying to Jew people."

Ummmmmm was about all I could get out. Who did she think she was? Professor Grif? I haven't heard someone use that phrase in almost 20 years. I have canned responses for "retarded" or "gay," but "Jewing poeple?" come on! it was a major teaching moment, but I failed. I wish I could say we had a long talk about the history of that idea, but we didn't. I reworded what she said, but didn't actually confront her about it. I replaced "Jew" w/ "screw," but I was shocked. The worst part is that it clearly didn't phase her at all. Who are these people who are teaching their kids that this is an acceptable way to go through life? On the other hand, when people start replacing these terms w/ coded euphemisms, it may be worse. At least when people are saying what they mean, we know who they are. On the other, other hand, I'm sure she didn't mean it the way it came across. That isn't to say that I can tolerate that kind of talk, but I can't single out one young woman for acting on an age-old stereotype.

It got me thinking about these racist terms & the reversal that is occurring. Saying that getting screwed over is equivalent to "getting Jewed" is a type of revisionist history. Who was it that spent the last 1,500 years getting screwed over in Europe? It's like the term "Indian Giver." Giving things & then taking them back is the way Native Americans give things? It's obviously the other way around. By constructing these terms, we enter into revisionist history as we convince ourselves that the way we've been treating people is actually the way we've been treated by those very people. That's not to say that those very people might not have been treating someone else like that, but in the end, it's just another way for white people to act like victims while rampaging across the globe. No wonder douchebags like Glenn Beck get so popular... they have revisionist historians, (presumably like this student's parents) as captive audiences who are already partaking in their little roll-reversal games. I bet Dwight Schultz would be happy w/ this situation, but H. M. Murdock would never have stood for it.