You are currently browsing the daily archive for September 18th, 2008.
Regardless of the Stanford ho, or maybe because of it, I will see this movie.
Also, I feel like if it were more well-advertised that there is a woman-on-woman scene in Vicky Christina Barcelona between Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz, there would have been a lot more men watching the damn thing. The slow seduction, the gentle kisses. The fantastical nature of their relationship with each other and a man that they live with. I could hear all the men’s thoughts: Dream come true– a relationship with two gorgeous women at once who are also relationship-ing with each other. I have to say though that I can’t deny the beauty there, of having Scarlett and Penelope. It was a good and interesting film. And it made me want to go back to Barcelona. Careful if you’re impressionable. You, too, might want to believe that you can go to Barcelona and make out with Penelope Cruz. If I thought that were a real possibility, then I’d be on the next plane out.
From one of my most-read sites: www.dooce.com
Hopefully Mrs. Armstrong won’t be too upset but I was so heartened by this poster that I wanted to share it as well. Obviously, if I get any emails from her, it’s coming down. But it makes me so happy to look at it.
Oh criminy, today I hated my job, or at least 97% of it.
They ride me like a friggin’ pony and then expect me to smile through it. I’m asked to complete tasks and then they make it impossible.
And then I find out I don’t have health insurance. I became part of that statistic.
So what do I do at 5 PM on the dot but go straight to the gym. I drag my feet the whole way there and then I get on a treadmill and I don’t even ease into it. I race through the entire hour run. In the end, I am sweaty and happy and renewed.
And then I see the clock and am pretty certain I’m going to be late for my hot date tonight with MML. I don’t stretch [you can see where this is going]. I throw on my shirt and dash home. I shower. I rush to get ready and run out the door. I make it early [!]. I buy the movie tickets. We meet up to eat and then watch Vicky Christina Barcelona. And finally, afterwards, I feel a bit more relaxed. I’m walking her to the bus stop. I do something weird apparently because suddenly I can barely move my neck. I pulled a muscle in the front of my neck somehow. It’s painful to swallow– bad energy shoots up into my ears and down the right side of my throat. I can barely hold my purse which is maybe three pounds right now [oh, the wonders of the light purse after the last two years of lugging around books and study material]. Standing in the train is painful. No position seems okay for my neck. I am near tears.
I power walk home just to get it over with while crying openly. My hand is on my neck the whole way and I feel as if I am barely keeping my head attached. When I do finally get home, I feel so relieved and in need of a good venting that I stand outside JET’s door, bitching about my day, disregarding my attitude about four blog posts’ ago. Of course I get animated but I try to stay as still as possible. Soon the right entire right side of my head is all pins and needles. I can no longer stand.
I’m now propped up in bed with a bunch of pillows. It’s a good thing I don’t have an appetite because I’m sure I can’t swallow anything, although I am dreaming a bit about those beets from last night. What really sucks though is that I apparently can’t get excited about anything because then the blood in my body gets all discombobulated and can’t make it to my brain. Even typing this all out, my lips are tingling and my cheeks are numb.
So I’m trying to stay calm, I am. I am trying to stay calm and absolutely still while what I really want to do is stab something. Run a few miles first maybe and then stab the bejeezus out of a punching bag.
But not just a little bit interesting. I’m not saying I subscribe but it provides perspective, people, which is, I know, a novel idea. I think it’s a bit more believable towards the beginning of the article and gets a bit extreme and overextends itself towards the end. But still, interesting.
And please resist the urge to lambast me because you take serious offense to some part of it because, as I show, I did not write this. I just copy-pasted the damn thing and wrote this hem-haw disclaimer.
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White Privilege, White Entitlement and the 2008 Election
Submitted by BuzzFlash on Sat, 09/13/2008 – 3:44pm.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Tim Wise
For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.
White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you’ll “kick their fuckin’ ass,” and talk about how you like to “shoot shit” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.
White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested.”
White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office–since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s–while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.
White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.
White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do–like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor–and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college–you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.
White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look.”
White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.
White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.
White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.
White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it, a “light” burden.
And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.
White privilege is, in short, the problem.
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me (Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008), and of Speaking Treason Fluently, publishing this month, also by Soft Skull.
