Elizabeth Boleman-Herring
Posted on 07/27/2009 11:25:05 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
This past month, Ruminant has been uncharacteristically silent, missing at least three column deadlines—not at all like her: and this at a time when her birth-country is so noisily scandal-ridden and patently loony that her usually effortless and knee-jerk snarkiness should have been propelling her on, of its own massive momentum, to write gleefully malicious prose, paragraph upon paragraph.
But to what effect, I ask? To what effect? What can commentary add to "news" that is so transparently monstrous and mad that the only sane response is either 1) silence; or 2) going postal, in DC just for starters.
Instead, following the Michael Jackson Death Circus, La Palin's Final (We Think)Withdrawal From The Pageant That Is Her Personal Alternative Universe, The Continuing Shenanigans Of Bad, Mad, Thinking-With-Their-Reproductive-Organs White Republican Boys in DC (All Paying Members of that notorious C-Street Frat-House, Sigma Kappa Upsilon Mu, or SKUM). . .I've been, instead, rendered mute. (And I haven't even MENTIONED the so-called Democrats in the House and Senate blocking Health Care Reform, the Rabbis and Mayors et al Recently Arrested in New Jersey, nor the ongoing idiocy-in-installments of Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, Joe Scarborough and Fox "News," just to name a few of the usual culprits-of-crap, all of which should lay obvious, raucous claims on a rabid-left-wing-columnist's time and conscience. SOMEONE has to write about this stuff, this madness, this America-of-Ours, I've always thought, and yet . . .I've been utterly remiss of late.
Why?
SKUM Overload, I opine. Despair over "Popular Culture" as it is known and lived in these United States. A mute desire to head out for the wilderness, where I would never again have to listen to Governor Mark Sanford waxing forth about his Argentinian Soul-Mate (oh, give me a break!), or The (C-Street) Family advancing a philosophy that somehow, guiltlessly, conflates fascism with Christianity. Even Lou Dobbs, always teetering, has gone firmly and finally round the bend. Yes, with The Birthers? That group of gormless jackasses who can't parse a birth certificate? What should I say about THEM? What mere words are up to the task of smacking down all the idiots in this Republic?
I'm not up to this right now, folks. DANTE might not have been up to it. He'd have run out of circles of hell before getting halfway from A to D. (Of course, Cheney would require his own personal circle. As would Karl Rove. Still! And John Ensign and Mark Sanford are bucking for a duplex in Dante's Lower-Circle-of-Fun: adjoining master bedrooms with a shared, en-suite fire-pit might do it.)
Hiking the Appalachian Trail, my ass! I only wish the dog had eaten Sanford's homework while he was out there woodshedding.
Mercy, we live in interesting times!
So, I've been on the sidelines of late, quietly watching the various long- and short-running plays—both comedies and tragedies—on the world's many stages.
And then came the Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. story, out of bucolic Cambridge, Massachusetts. A Harvard professor gets hauled off in handcuffs for "breaking into" his own residence, even after displaying two forms of I.D. to the arresting officer. President Obama, commenting later, says (quite rightly) that the police "acted stupidly". . .and then, days later, does an about-face, and says he could "have calibrated those words differently."
How, precisely?
Had Sergeant James Crowley come into my rural residence (were I still living in South Carolina), without being invited, and tried to haul me off in handcuffs for jimmying my own door open, he would have been dealing with not some sort of verbal "overreaction" (President Obama's words), but, rather, with Smith & Wesson. (I lived waaaaayyyy out in the Oconee County woods, and had to fire my shotgun off into the night sky on many occasions to discourage predations by two-legged varmints.)
Now, I understand, Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley have been invited to the White House to sit down and chat amicably over a brewskie. Were I Professor Gates, I'd be waterboarding Sgt. Crowley with my Sam Addams.
The bottom line is: it still sucks being Black in America, and I suspect it's going to suck for quite a long time to come.
Now, true, I'm an uppity, lippy white woman of a certain age. I've even talked back to the Teaneck police, on occasion, when I felt they were being unnecessarily heavy-handed in the course of issuing a traffic ticket (to my husband) for double-parking outside Louie's Charcoal Pit for precisely two minutes while I dropped off medicine for a sick child. Did me (and Dean) a lot of good: the ticket got written because I got lippy. But, Oh Lord help me, what if I'd been Black and lippy? I can tell you "what if." I'd have been given a second ticket, at the very least, for disorderly conduct.
Now, I also admit, as a child of the 1960s Mini-Revolution in this country, I have stood on ramparts and been tear-gassed while protesting the Vietnam War and calling the Athens, Georgia police who were gassing me "porcine." They were porcine, and they should have been on our side of the line of fire, the right side of history. Post-Kent-State, it was pretty obvious that law enforcement was not batting for the angels in America and, though I've taken citizens' classes in police procedures, and generally got along well with my small-town police force in Pendleton, South Carolina, in Teaneck and, obviously, Cambridge, there's still a great big old problem between the (mostly) men in blue, and those they've sworn to serve and protect.
And, if you happen to be Black, or Latino, or somehow obviously mentally impaired, you're likely to have an even bigger great big old problem with the police.
Reportedly, Professor Gates said to Sergeant Crowley, "I'll speak with your mama outside" (NYT, Vol. CLVIII, No. 54,747, Page 1). Right On, Professor Gates! And right on into those handcuffs, alas. . . .
Well, President Obama missed the boat on this one.
It was not Professor Gates who overreacted, or Sergeant Crowley who needed his feathers smoothed.
It was, instead, an opportunity for the First Black Man In The White House to say, "Enough!" and it was the police, all across America, who needed to be told. Along with their mamas.
So this old hippie bitch claims she would have shot the cops? I wonder if the local police where she lives are aware of her attitude toward law enforcement. Maybe somebody should forward this rant to them.
I love how you can tell someone is an jacka$$ by the way they chose to write.
Wow! Funny in an IMO despairing for the country sort of way, with every cliche imaginable.
Anyway, if a Hahvahd prof thinks insulting a cop’s mamma is the path to a dialogue or to prove his street cred........
Didja see the vid of Gates in the Vineyard? He was riding a tricycle! Too much.
She was surely raised better than that. Bless her heart.
Don't overlook South Africa. Once aparthied was abolished it became paradise on earth...Just like Hawaii with birth certificates!
>> Comments?
Gimme a dee!
Gimme an eye!
Gimme a see!
Gimme a kay!
Gimme an aich!
Gimme an eee!
Gimme an ay!
Gimme a dee!
Whassat spell?
That’s my comment.
I’ve known a few blacks who have bitched about being African American and how proud of their African heritage they are and go back to mother Africa. And come home with a new appreciation of being American.
Raw deal coming here but sure glad to be here.
Well, if it sucks to be black in America, one can only attempt to imagine the suckiness of being black in much of Africa.
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Elizabeth Boleman-Herring
The author inadvertently demonstrates just how much of liberalism is moralistic outrage - I put it at 90% - coupled to just how little fact - 5%, tops, leaving the other five to be dedicated to self-absorption. If this particular moron even does own a firearm - highly doubtful - one would expect her to sue Smith & Wesson after blowing her own foot off.
To the writer: GROW UP.
I owe you nothing.
My parents owe you nothing.
My grandparents owe you nothing.
I don’t think less of you because of your race.
In order for me to place you in higher regard - how about doing something useful?
Gee, isn’t that what Larry Sinclair said about Obama and his friends?
"Wait !... I'm an uppity, lippy white woman of a certain age."
lol...sounds like a real prize.
“Thank God my granddaddy got on that boat.” — Muhammed Ali, on returning to American from Zaire, Africa after beating George Foreman.
Someone really has to be dedicated to ignorance to write an article so full of non-facts and misstatements. The truth is out there, honey, if you look.
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