Dare I wrestle with this tar baby?
. . .too smart for his own good
Apparently, John McCain has developed a severe case of foot-in-mouth disease. He used the racial epithet tar baby, recently, to describe a sticky political mess:
Answering questions at a town hall meeting, the Arizona senator was discussing federal involvement in custody cases when he said, “For me to stand here and…say I’m going to declare divorces invalid because of someone who feels they weren’t treated fairly in court, we are getting into a tar baby of enormous proportions and I don’t know how you get out of that.”
After the event, McCain told reporters: “I don’t think I should have used that word and I was wrong to do so.”
Not that it’s necessary, being evident throughout my blog, but I’ll be the first to admit that I can be as pejorative as a bowlegged hillbilly mugwump. The only thing about me that is truly PC – is my PC.
If you’re offended by something I say or write, then perhaps you need to grow a thicker skin, no matter the color (unless well-camouflaged), or stay out of my jungle. Why should I be forced to coddle the sniveling bewildebeests of the world simply because their proclivity for sensitivity suddenly makes the Princess and the Pea look exceedingly tolerant?
Back to McCain. I’m here to support his freedom of speech, which inherently defends my own. First, I don’t really like McCain. He’s a flip-flopping, waffling kiss-ass who will say whatever he needs to get elected. Oh, wait, he’s a politician. Doh! I forgot. And I am a scathing, sacreligioius mountain monkey from Appalachia, but that’s okay, ’cause I’m rubber and you’re glue . . . nanny nanny poo poo.
Until you start throwing rocks, knives and thermo-nuclear warheads, I don’t give a rat’s ass what you say to my face or behind my back, which is redundant. Do the geometry. Figure it out.
Too many people are wasting too much precious time getting their panties in a twist over mere words. It is only at times like these that we can learn anything from Britney Spears: Be pantyless. While language is incredibly important, the energy and intent behind the words outweigh the actual syllables and sounds uttered. Actions speak louder than words, always.
For instance, if you say, “Hey, Kat — you dumbass, white trash hillbilly! Grab a plate and fill ‘er up, we’re puttin’ on the feedbag,” as you open your front door wide with a smile, then I’ll be grabbin’ a fork, instead of a “Fuck you,” and not take your poetry personally or seriously.
However, if you’re smiling in a “Jack’s Back” kinda fashion with what appears to be a bloody hatchet in front of your back while purring, “Here, Kitty Kitty Kitty,” then pardon me if I, once again, don’t pay attention to your words — and keep on walking.
Michael Richards saying nigger was a result of a public meltdown as he became unglued and was, briefly, an idiot. Because of the incredibly negative connotation of the N-word, I find it reprehensible when even black people use it.
Is black still hip to say? Are you truly African-American people, if you weren’t born in Africa? Do you have the right to use the term “African” in your genealogical nomenclature? Should I be called a European-American because my skinny white ass people are from Britain? I don’t even appreciate being referred to as an American, these days. I am a Citizen of Earth. I am a Star Child. I am.
What is the proper phrase du jour for colored people? I’m a colored people. I don’t get pissed off when anyone calls me either white or Caucasian. I’m not Asian, am I? I’ve never even seen the Caucasus Mountains. I’m not fully white, either. Sometimes, I can get quite brown if I stand in the sun for awhile. Can I have a rotating sign on my forehead, please, like a cross-town bus so you’ll know what race I’m representing, today, before I smack your ass silly as you stand in the middle of the intersection pointing your finger at me?
Why should I continually be forced to upgrade my lexicon — when my intention and disposition were never politically incorrect to begin with — because some, allegedly, disenfranchised group thinks they’ve come up with the most safe and homogenized expression for their culture, character or cause, each week?
Is my indifference to the issue merely because I am white and haven’t known their particular pain and suffering? I’ve known both pain and suffering, so regardless of how you dress up your pig or make it wear lipstick, I can empathize and tell the difference between right and wrong. Slavery of any kind is wrong. Slavery to your own narrow-minded perceptions is the worst form of it.
Why do some black people keep enslaving themselves by wearing the word nigger like it’s a cool, kindred, esprit de corp badge of brothership? You should work harder at becoming my brother rather than putting all of that passion and poetry into compartmentalizing your anger in a continually failing subculture of America. Simply, you alienate me every time you say nigger, knowing that I’m not included in the repartee, however crude. It is gang and tribal mentality, which does not allow you to achieve your or our potential, together.
Appalachia was my ghetto — and I got out. If you escape your ghetto, why would you keep carrying it with you like that cloud of dust that follows Pig Pen everywhere he goes? Get out of your damn ghetto and build a better tomorrow, for everyone. As long as you keep fighting to be black, brown, red, yellow, or chartreuse, pointing out that I’m white, then we’ll never be America.
If black people — and I will keep using this term because it’s easier to type and doesn’t limit their skin tone or being human to any particular continent — want greater respect, then they should encourage their own to stop using the word nigger, which is a silly term of endearment that only further degrades and segregates our society. To imply that it’s cool if they use it — but not if any other race does — is pathetically childish and will never resolve the issue of racism.
I don’t walk through Appalachia saying, “Sup, hillbilly?”
I doubt the increased usage of that dyslogistic homey patter will help lessen the stereotypical characterization of my mountain people or garner greater respect by outsiders. Likewise, though I am an equal opportunity curmudgeon, I don’t believe that I have the right to bandy about pejorative poetry or street slang to prove that I’m one with the people — even my people, whatever that means — then tell others that they can’t use the same terms. It’s hypocritical and purposefully exclusive. How big of a crock of shit is that?
When I was young and beginning to read, voraciously, I loved the Brer Rabbit tales. Though I was rarely around black people — there was nary a one in my community or school, to my knowledge — I knew that there was no difference. At the soul level, we are one and colorless. In fact, until I read “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Huckleberry Finn” in junior high school, I can’t recall ever having a thought about racism — good or bad. Perhaps I was too sheltered, but I am glad for the simple innocence of my early years.
I related to Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer, immensely, and all I wanted to do was go on some big adventure, like rafting down the Ohio River. It is too bad that the innocence of youth is lost along the way, drowning in the stagnant tidewater pools of pride and prejudice that feed people’s ignorance and fears. How much of your disenfranchisement comes as a result of your own narrow-minded projection of imagined hurts onto the blank canvas of your world? Try painting a different portrait of yourself and see if other colors can be used. Maybe your life will shift towards the light.
Evil and stupidity come in a variety of shades. Sometimes, the contrast of a person’s deeds to the alleged purity of their proclamations is all the more glaring when they ride in on a white horse while wearing a white hat and shout, “Death to the Dictator!” as they, too, use equal amounts of force, torture and heinous conduct to liberate the people. I can see clearly the infinite shades of gray surreptitiously shadowing Abu Ghraib.
Some of my family fought for the South and the North during the Civil War. I have a broken cavalry sword found inside the walls of a barn on my grandfather’s property, which — as the story goes — belonged to a family member fighting in the war. He brought it home and broke it, then used it to slaughter pigs. I wonder how many enemy soldiers were gutted with that sword. ‘Tis a bloody thing, but a vivid reminder of both the best and worst in man, when one will rise up to fight for another — at times, brother against brother — killing barbarically in the process.
How many of my extended family fought for and against slavery? I don’t know. I do know that I fight against slavery, everyday — especially my own — as represented by the man, by my employer and mainly by the demons dancing within my own mind. When will I wake up and see clearly how I have painted myself into a philosophical corner by limiting the amount of perty colors I choose to use in my artistic expression?
If someone had handed Michelangelo a bucket of black paint, only, could he have stunned the world with the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? If she could not have used the letter E, how many poems would Maya Angelou have written? If you keep killing each other over a poorly thought phrase or slip of the lip, how many will be left to help you fight the real enemies? If footmen tire you, what will horses do?
The only one who wins a turf war is the landscaper who re-sods the decimated fields after Sherman burns and marches through them to raze Atlanta. Stop being dumb sods, fighting amongst yourselves, and pay attention to the money trail. Who benefits from the Iraq War or the Rap War? Where is the money going? Who reaps the rewards of innocent lives lost, the raping of a country and the further trashing of the principles that made America great, once? If I need to answer these questions for you, then all is lost.
I don’t care if John McCain screams tar baby from the top of the tree he’s been swinging in since he came home from Vietnam. I appreciate his efforts and sacrifice for his country, and what that means for all of us. However, I’m not voting for McCain because of any perceived PR gaffe surrounding his non-PC moment in the spotlight, of late. I will not vote for McCain due to his unhealthy support for the Bush Administration’s continued ramping up of the Iraq debacle. That, and I think he’s off his rocker.
McCain supports sending more troops. I say, bring ‘em home! This is where McCain is politically incorrect and no amount of turpentine is going to wash him clean o’ dat tar baby, Brer Fox.
The Iraq War has been a massive military-industrial-complex boondoggle of unprecedented proportions, yet the media’s smoke and mirrors focus on bullshit like Anna Nicole Smith, American Idolatry and Who Gives a Shit About Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, instead of more grave matters.
Washington has been butt-fucking the media since long before they were embedded, together, in the Blitzkrieg to Baghdad. The more young American boys and girls that we allow Washington to plant in the ground or watch being dishonored at Walter Reed after giving life and limb — again and again — matters gravely, to me.
Until you raise your children to respect themselves and their neighbors, and stop being so willing to blindly become a member of any gang — even one proudly wearing the colors of the American flag on its arm patch — then this country will continue its horrific slide into oblivion. Rome lasted for a few centuries. Some of China’s dynasties made it nearly a millennia. All empires will crumble, eventually, for nothing made of man will stand the test of time.
The old men behind the curtain don’t give a fuck about you killing yourselves — whether in the mean streets of East L.A. and Harlem, or the bloody burroughs of Baghdad. When dying for your country is lining the pockets of the shadow bankers, movers and shakers, then it’s time to stand up for yourself, first. Kids knifing kids and popping a cap in the ass of some Westside punk will never get the man’s attention as a means of positive change. It only helps him justify to his constituents why he needs to keep the big thumb of oppression down on your head, your ‘hood and your home.
No matter if you’re whacking each other on local streets or having your ass blown off in a poorly armored Humvee in Sadr City, you’re just chum in the muddy waters of American Imperialism. Wake the fuck up and swim for shore. Stop having turf wars over ground that doesn’t matter. When America rebuilds America, then I’ll give a shit about Iraq. All the so-called ugly words that separate us pale in comparison to the darkness at the heart of Washington.
Be colorblind, not blind. Or is using the term blind no longer politically correct? There are many people in this country who are blind to what’s happening in our world, these days. If you don’t open your eyes, it won’t matter whether I say African-American, black, honky, white-ass motherfucker, nigger or beaner. Stop letting the moneymakers make you and me the enemy of each other. In their Ivory Towers, the Powers that Be just eat this shit up, laughing all the way to the bank, while we die in the dirty mean streets at home or abroad.
No matter your skin color, we all bleed red. Where you see tar baby, I see Big Oil. Now that’s a sticky mess we need to wipe from our hands and souls. Don’t you find it interesting that Big Oil is profiting from this war like never before? Yet, how many miles do you drive and fly each year? How many lights do you burn? Do you really think that American interests care to rebuild Iraq and bring its oil production capability back online? They make more per barrel when the Iraqi National Oil Company lies silent under blankets of dust and rust. Your silence smothers me as Big Oil is choking the life out of you.
Follow the money trail. Heat up your tar baby and grab some feathers. Hold Washington’s feet to the fire till someone starts yelping, “Skin me Brer Kat,” says he. “Snatch out my eyeballs, tear out my ears by the roots,” says he, “But please, Brer Kat, don’t fling me in that briar patch, ” says he. Then, you may realize the true source of your pain.
Sun Tzu said, “Know your enemy.” Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
The Kat says, “I ain’t yer enemy.”
McCain can say tar baby all he wants, I still won’t vote for him. Blacks can say nigger amongst themselves till bling bling drips from their butts. And Latinos can keep stabbing each other, here, in cancerous Santa Barbara where the core of paradise is being eaten away by the clash of cultures, the crassness of castes and the haves and the have-nots, while the Yellow Brick Road’s rush hour congestion seethes and waits for the widening of minds that may never come.
As long as adults keep acting like children and providing such poor role models in this Jerry Springer Meets YouTube World gone mad, we cannot expect the children to behave any differently. I don’t desire to join any of your gangs. Like Groucho Marx, I question the veracity of any organization that would have me as a member. Being a member of a failing society, however, I’m aware that the human condition and close proximity of differences can make for some intriguing drama.
I haven’t killed anyone nor sent them off to be killed. Blood or oil is not on my hands and I sleep very well at night. But if children keep killing children, whatever the perceived justification and wherever it may occur — in paradise or Fallujah — then I’m going to keep calling them as I see them.
Some may consider my language or my Katitude ugly. However, let me point out what I feel is truly ugly:
- The Iraq War is ugly.
- Child molestation is ugly.
- Children killing children is ugly.
- Washington’s incompetence, indifference and complicit manipulation of world societies is extremely ugly.
By comparison, my language is beautiful.
Whether I say, “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark”, or “There must be a nigger in the woodpile”, if you focus on my language and not my message or intent, then you’re missing the point. Thus, I’ll have to call you a fucktard.
A fucktard is worse than your average retard, ’cause they’s a fuckin’ retard. Oh, I suppose you’re going to inform me that retard is no longer PC and that I should have my mouth washed out with soap, my mind washed out with Christian love and my Free Speech washed down the drain with the rest of the Bill of Rights. Well, it’s my blog and you can kiss my hairy ass.
In my jungle, this is as politically correct as it gets.
The Kat
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