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Fairytales for a Practical Princess - 2008-11-30
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9:35 p.m. - 2004-05-01
I still can’t get past this ‘Life was grand then’ thing. There’s a fairly wide-spread belief that real life was just like the movies and TV shows of the time. Hand-in-hand with that goes the notion that the Civil Rights Movement and the subsequent societal shifts are some kind of aberration and if the leash is yanked hard enough all the ‘trouble’ would stop. Everything would be Leave It To Beaver again and just dandy. The Civil Rights Movement was born of desperate frustration. It wasn’t like black people were bored and said, “Hey! Let’s go get beaten up by some cops!” They were Americans who wanted to live as Americans. Not ‘special’ rights, just the freedom to live under the same laws and have the same protections and opportunities the white Americans had. So it’s gone on, an ever widening pool of inclusion. Another step in America’s evolution. And like any newborn, this new society is a messy thing. A lot of crap with newborns. A lot of noise, too. It takes growth and time and experience before the baby can control itself. We’ve made huge strides forward over the last few decades and it’s going to take a while before the new wears off and we are comfortable. In the mean time? Right now we got a whole LOT of crap. Frankly, it stinks in here. Most of what passes for TV entertainment these days makes me want to throw up. It’s garbage. But guess what? I’ve discovered the ‘off’ button! I make my own choices. Books, movies, music, art, same deal. Banning books and censorship isn’t the solution to crap entertainment, choosing wisely is. It’s as arrogant as hell to assume your level of comfort and your opinions are the only correct ones and impose them on others. That’s what censorship is, making the choice for everyone else based on very subjective criteria. Janet Jackson’s tit, for instance. What does it say about us as a society that the half-time entertainment of a violent sports event was a white guy tearing off a black woman’s clothing? Not a peep about the implications of that sordid scenario. A guy pulling a woman’s clothes off is okay, but a nipple is the Devil? Mass hysteria because some kids might have seen a boob? I’d rather my sons see an honest breast than some lurid mock rape. But I’ve been known to be weird like that. I think personal responsibility is at an all-time low. I detest victim thinking and the law-suit mentality. I loathe them. Every whiner and crybaby out there seems to have a case of colic and they are howling their lungs out. I wish they’d shut the hell up already. Shit happens, people. No matter how many airbags you load your life with, if you don’t drive your own car as well as you can you’re gonna get hurt. Simple as that. You want to barrel down the road in any old heedless way and expect everyone else to watch out for you? I don’t think so. Like the bumper-sticker says, ‘Hang Up and DRIVE’. To continue with the hokey road metaphor, shutting down the highway might make for fewer accidents but nobody gets anywhere either. Roadblocks, be they restrictions on reproduction, or censorship of the media, or suspending the Constitution, roadblocks do not make us better drivers. You can’t close the bridge and then crow how you solved the traffic problem. Some of the biggest roadblock builders and loudest whiners are the members of the Christian Right. Now before we go further I want to get something straight. I am refering to Christian doctrine being used as the measure and guide for public policy. God politics. I’m tired of being slammed as a religion hater because I object to someone else’s religious beliefs being used to tell me how I must live MY life. You can worship raspberry jell-o for all I care. It’s when you try to pass laws saying everybody must worship raspberry jell-o that we’re going to have a problem. And I am seriously sick of being told I am a bad person and an immoral one because I don’t want God mixed with my government. I just don’t think the rules from one small segment of all the world’s faiths should be basis for law in a free society. Theocracy as law sounds an awful lot like Afghanistan. Not my idea of a free and democratic society. The Christian Taliban doesn’t see it that way though, and by not kow-towing to their aggressive and repressive encroachments not only am I marked as a God hater, but UN-American! Boy howdy, am I sick of it!!!! There is no going ‘back’. There was no ‘back’ back there! It was because of that supposedly ‘wonderful’ time in our history that need for freedom and fairness exploded outward and so many marginalized groups finally stood tall and demanded in. They’d had enough. Enough of living a place that’s supposed to be about equality and being under the thumb of the animals who believed themselves to be more equal than the others. Instead of harkening back to something which was just a pretty false face over something seriously ugly, take a brace and dive into life as it is. This wailing messy new society has amazing good things to offer. Stop trying to cram people and ideas into niches long ago outgrown and embrace the future. Try it. You’ll like it! ~LA
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