Your Monday Morning Atheism Moment

Repent Sinners! Also, I want that dress.

The blogger's national anthem.

Hehe.

Bloggers of the world unite!
Stand up for your blogly rights!
Don't let the sunshine spoil the rain
Just type up and complain (heheheh)

Let this be the bloggers' cause:
Point out everybody's flaws!
Something is wrong with everything
Except the way I blog!

Geraldine Ferraro tells it like it isn't.

Hey, guess what? The pre-moving business pretty much extends itself into a post-moving business where I still don"t have a whole lot of time for anything and I'm constantly running late because I can't find the box where I put the thing I'm looking for.

So, still not much time to blog. But I did want to talk about something.

By now everyone has heard the toolish remarks of Geraldine Ferraro regarding Barack Obama's apparent lack of any sort of interesting qualities besides his skin tone. To quote Joe Conason in Salon:

Until lately, Ferraro was an admired waxwork, a symbol of national progress and a brief entry in a child's textbook. Then she confided her opinion of the Democratic presidential front-runner to a California newspaper. "If [Barack] Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept."

That sounded like folk wisdom from her home borough of Queens, N.Y., where she once represented the Archie Bunker constituency in Congress -- and where racist resentment of all those "very lucky" black people was once a common refrain (and can still be heard in certain saloons and clubhouses today). Those corrosive observations usually referred to affirmative action, which threatened traditional ethnic monopolies on certain jobs and contracts in both the public and private sectors. And indeed, Ferraro's reaction to the criticism of her stupidity is reminiscent of the resentful whining of white men who complained about "reverse" discrimination and the supposed taboos of political correctness.

Yes. Exactly. Whenever this meme has appeared with regard to Obama (and it's especially hurtful to to hear it kicked around the feminist blogosphere) it's like a stab in the gut. I hear my mother's Italian family (yes, from Queens, NY) in my head saying the same things about my father.

Via Daisy, here's Roseanne Barr making a similar assertion.

Premiere Hillary represents the soul of the Democratic Party: the women who support her, Latinas, Latinos, 30 percent of the black voters, the blue collar worker, male and female, as just proven in Ohio, and the Baby Boomers...quit bitching and moaning and whining now! Be a man and take vice, bow to the woman who is the last vestige of the New Deal which represents universal health care.

Silly black man. Even though you're ahead in delegates, you just don't know your proper place, which is bowing down to white women. And even though she's behind Obama, Clinton deserves the nomination because...well...she just does. And 30 percent of black people is plenty enough!

Ugh. When I've heard feminists say recently that racism is less openly welcome in our culture right now than sexism, I can only point to examples like this. There are ways to call someone an uppity nigger who doesn't know their place without using the words "uppity nigger who doesn't know their place."

And I'm back!

So I finally have internet hooked up at the new place. Hooray!

You can tell it's been awhile since I've been on the internet because I'm apparently the last person to see this:



And the response:



Is this what happens when celebrities get bored?

Only of interest to distant relatives

Okay. A few things.

1. She still takes my glasses off my face. And I'm not a good disciplinarian.
2. Yes, that is an empty case of Rolling Rock.
3. When YouTube compressed the video, it came out really dark and really loud for some reason.
4. I sound like a dude.
5. Abbie is cuter than you.

Still With the Busy

Aelthing is over. Will upload pictures when it doesn't hurt to move.

Now I'll be busy with moving and College Bowl. Gah.

I just keep thinking about March, when all I'll have to deal with is school and work and family. Yay! Lol.

Dear Jack,

Wherefore art thou? Come back!

Busy

It's Aelthing time again, and also we're moving to a new house this week.

Plus, the regular scheduled childcare, work, and school thing. So, really really busy for the next little bit.

Who's the cutest of all the little potatoes?

Abbie, that's who.

I am a dork. Albeit a funky groovy one.

So there I am eating lunch on campus listening to my new-used sidekick's mp3 player, reading about Anglo archeologists making up Montezuma legends for Pecos Pueblo when I realize I've forgotten I'm in a crowded cafeteriaand have started doing a humming, butt-wiggling chair dance, and yes, people are staring at me.

It was all so much easier when I had a mohawk and people were staring at me anyway.

I accidentally made a white girl sad today.

So this semester I'm taking a cultural anthropology class on the peoples of the Circum-Caribbean, taught by this tiny, outspoken African-American female professor with an accent I might call "used-to-be-Brooklyn." Slightly intimidating woman for a certain type of person, I guess.

The first day of class, after some introductory, get-to-know-you type stuff, we started talking about race, and specifically how it's constructed in the United States. The professor started asking a girl, a very sweet-looking, very young-looking, (maybe even looking a lot like the mythical college girl ranted about by a certain crazy blogger we'll call Smizmar) white girl in the front row questions about the differences between the two of them. The girl mentioned skin color, hair curliness, nose width, and other phenotypical (physical) traits, at which the professor kept prompting, "What else? What is the difference between black people and white people in the United States?"

I got what she was trying to get at (as in, the differences lie more in terms of social, cultural constructions than physical ones), so I, thinking I was being helpful, offered to the white girl, "Well, you might live in a wealthier neighborhood." After which the white girl turned beet-red and everyone else in the class went, "OOOoooOOoo!" The black girl behind me said under her breath, "Nice one!"

So now for the rest of the semester I guess I'm Huey Freeman from The Boondocks or something.

To which I have to ask, why is that? Why is merely acknowledging the social and economic disparities that occur between races (yes, that's a touch simplistic, I know, but for brevity's sake, etc., etc.) a revolutionary, radical thing? Especially in the context of an anthropology class, because you can't talk about the culture unless you can talk about the fucking culture.

Bah. So, white girl, I'm sorry I embarrassed you. I didn't mean to. I didn't think reality would be embarrassing.

Testing...

This is a test of Vanessa's new Sidekick's (thanks Timmy!) blogging capabilities. This is only a test.

Carry on.

Okay, one more thing.

Just in case no one will click on the link below. Every time I watch this, I blubber.



Seriously, this guy is living in the heart of everyone who works a shitty retail McJob. I feel like a tiny this guy is singing from inside my chest every time I take a phone call at my own personal shitty McJob. Corny, I know. Stupid reality show, I know, I know.

Maybe the next revolution will be everyone leaving their pre-fab cubicles and following their individual bliss.

Via Jack via Portly Dyke.

Blogging: The Lightning Round

The semester is two days old and I already don't have time to blog, so these one-word links will have to do you.

Exactly!

So?

Cool!

Duh!

Opera!

Please!

And that's all folks!

Race: The Power of an Illusion

I was thinking about Barack Obama and being multiracial last night, and this documentary came to mind. But I couldn't remember the name of it until I literally had one of those three a.m. Eureka! moments where I sat bolt upright in bed and went, "Race: The Power of an Illusion!!!"

I could only find this one bit on YouTube, and wanted to write more on the issue but really kind of don't feel like it now. But, watch it anyway. Highly recommended.