The Rainbow.

‘It is inconceivable that this campaign to portray Mr. Obama as the insidious “other” would have been conducted against a white president.’ – New York Times editorial, 4/28/2011.
 

I was hoping to start this blog with some sedate, non-confrontational, non-partisan, happyface stuff; there’s a 'popcorn kittens' video going viral that would have been perfect. Yknow, so I could suck in some repeat visits. Build up my hit counts. Become the darling of the advertising world. Convince everybody that I’m a rational, caring human being, a funny guy. Acquire a fan club. Drooling sycophants and fawning acolytes by the thousands. Raw, naked power.

Oh well.

It probably wouldn’t have worked, anyway. America in the 21^st Century doesn’t go for bland. Being bland & boring doesn’t work. Being loud works, even if you have nothing to say. Especially if you have nothing to say. 


Bland is not the same as empty, though. Empty works. So does bigotry, which is basically the same thing. Which leads me to…

(One of my rightwing friends has already advised me that I have lost the ability to look at the issues rationally & nothing I’m about to say will change his mind.)

…this birther bullshit. It is bigotry. It is racism. It is intolerance. It is choosing to be stupid because having to adapt to a changing world & drag oneself kicking & screaming out of the 16^th century is too bloody difficult. And it is indistinguishable from, & part & parcel of, The Tea Party, the tail wagging the Republican dog.

It has to stop. Now.

If you don’t think Obama should be President on political grounds or philosophical grounds or moral grounds or, God help us, religious grounds, then whatever, do what you gotta do. Vote him out in 2012. Campaign hard. Be a positive part of The Process. If you don’t like Obama’s policies (assuming you’re having better luck than I am at figuring out what they are), fine. I’m not happy with Obama, either, but probably for very different reasons. Let's discuss it like adults.

But anybody who thought Obama is not an American citizen before he released his birth certificate is a bigot. Anybody who still thinks so since he released his birth certificate is a delusional bigot. If you don’t like the word, too bad. Too Got-damned bad. That’s what you are. You would never have pulled this crap on a white guy.

The Tea Party is nothing but white supremacy with a populist hood over its empty head.

But, like I said, racism sells in America. It works. It gets you where you want to go. A Republican Oklahoma state representative declares that black people don’t work as hard as white people & then apologizes. In Missouri, the Republican Speaker of the House suggests that flooding a predominantly black town is preferable to flooding largely white-owned farmland & then apologizes. A Southern California GOP official emails a picture depicting the President of the United States as an ape, with apes for parents, & then apologizes. Do you see the same pattern I see? Spew racism, rile the base, pocket a few votes for next time, & then apologize to the press, and repeat as necessary.

It pains me greatly to say this, but America is not ready for a nonwhite President. Not yet. Not this one, not any other one. We’re still fighting the Civil War. I was stunned to find out that people still say ‘nigra.’ Silly me.

But whether you like it or not, folks, America is changing color.

The Rainbow is coming. In our lifetimes, non-Hispanic whites will become a minority in America. Sooner or later, our elected officials will start to resemble our population. Of course, this can be delayed indefinitely through slander, intimidation, fear, terror, all the things Donald Trump is doing right now, or other tactics that are much, much worse. But The Rainbow is coming & it's inevitable. If you’d drop the blinders for two minutes, you’d see that it is a good thing. It’s a very good thing. It’s a great thing. We can accept it, embrace it, and live up to the promises we made to the world hundreds of years ago, or we can be South Africa, pre-Mandela.

It’s The Rainbow or apartheid. You choose.

(Yeah, I know. I said that things had to stay civil here. But it’s my blog. Sorry.)

It Starts Here.

Hi. My name is Don McKennan. I’m Dave’s Brother. I’m a stagehand. Dave was, too.

My brother Dave died in an automobile accident several years ago. I miss him today as much as I did the day he died. I still see him walking down the street, almost every day, & I can still hear him calling me from down the block, somewhere behind me. But no. He’s gone. He’s gone & he’s not coming back.

Dave was a stutterer. A stammerer, actually. Watching or listening to him try to unbottle himself was always painful, but I thought that spitting out the word he was stuck on for him, whether out of compassion or impatience, would be worse, for both of us. Not surprisingly, Dave never used a hundred words when ten would do. (I, as you shall see, am the opposite.) Besides, he was usually worth the wait.

Some years before he died, I was very surprised when he told me that he was running for union office. Stagehands can be a very tough audience. As Dave put it, All you have to do is stand up at a union meeting & introduce yourself, & immediately one third of the membership will hate your guts. In our culture, ‘fucking asshole’ is generally a term of endearment.

I asked him what made him do it, because public speaking was clearly not his strong suit. He said, After years of letting other people control the debate & being reluctant or afraid to contribute, the day came when I felt like I needed to be the person standing on the soapbox.

I said, Good for you, then. I’m not there yet.

He said, You’ll get there. You have more to say than I do.

(More words, certainly. More substance, I dunno.)

I said, How will I know when I’m ready.

He said, When the time comes, you’ll know. You can’t predict it, & you can’t force it.  He said, You might not even be aware that it’s your time to get up on the soapbox until, suddenly, you realize that you’ve already been on it for half an hour, railing against the gods. Or tilting at windmills.

He lost that election, and held a victory party anyway.

Well. Perhaps my moment has come. I read so much drivel these days that passes for rational thought & reasoned discourse, tales ‘told by an idiot, all sound & fury, signifying nothing.’ The way I look at it, I can’t possibly do any worse.

So. It starts. Here come a few more idiot’s tales. Just what the world needs.

It’s hard to tell. Maybe I’ve been there half an hour already.