when the saints come marching in

[Guest jizzdepapi]

hi guys. (why do i feel like Richard Simmons when i say, "hi guys"?)

 

i was one of the main instigators to numerous postings (on different threads) regarding a POSSIBLE racist comment made by Fing Fang Foom. following responses from others uneasy with this post, i suggested that people could analyze their motivation in making statements/assumptions about oppressed groups in the never-ending (for me, anyway) battle to overcome bigoted assumptions. i even suggested that people do this quietly and NOT post the results of their self-examination though i WASN’T suggesting they shouldn't. (i hope this summarizes my message fairly. don't want to go back and read it again because 1) i'm lazy and 2) there were so many heated responses i grew weary of it all; pushed some big-time buttons I guess.

 

now that it's (mostly?) shaken out, i'd like to say that...

 

i've been a leftist (i’d say radical if i was totally honest) activist for most of my adult life--a member of ACT UP until it fell apart in Connecticut and have lobbied on issues affecting the poor and oppressed for years. i don't like censorship and would NEVER accept anyone--government, business or individual--intruding on my free speech. in fact, any number of times, i've been carted off to the slammer for insisting on expressing my views. so everyone please feel free to speak up here. why would anyone want to censor speech in a forum as limited as this?

 

i also watched “all in the family” along with other norman lear productions. i think i was totally in love with maude at one point. lear appealed to so many for many reasons, surely a chief one being that he suggested a world not populated by intolerant people. much as i loved archie and edith and was amused by the outcome of their, respectively, intolerant and dingy behavior, i certainly wouldn’t want to live with them. i’m grateful that my mom and dad were nothing like them. i enjoyed archie’s caustic humor and his unthinking inflexibility but recognize it for what it was. as edith managed to keep their marriage intact for so many years, she was certainly much less of a dingbat than the script might have suggested. as in real life, lear’s scripts reveal a tenderness and loyalty to archie paradoxical to his thought process.

 

i think Fing Fang Foom is okay with black church ladies and sincerely say he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body (though he certainly doesn’t need my affirmation). on the other hand, i don’t feel bad at all about asking him and others to look at their comments. there’s a free speech issue here on both sides and it hopefully made some people think about issues they might not have addressed in a while. we all know that when a gay man chooses to call himself a queer or live up to a stereotype we can relax; when a straight person does the same, we exercise a little more caution and, i hope, feel free to question their motivation (i point to comments on thread about enimen).

 

on the other hand, i would question comments made by (i think it was Beware of Nick) regarding girls/women. i might be wrong but many times when women express an opinion strongly, males deem them “hysterical.” sometimes that characterization is accurate but usually not. my feelings on this are that when any one of us, male or female, can walk into a board meeting of xyz corp. (i.e., any fortune 100 company) and ask, “so how are you boys doing today?” then we can call women girls. i can’t imagine why we’d want to. i’m reminded of a joke in which a female law graduate interviewed at a major law firm. one of the male partners asked her if she knew how to type. taken aback, she replied that she also knew how to fuck but didn’t do either for money. (i assume she didn’t get the job.)

 

other writers mentioned kindness in their posts and i agree almost wholeheartedly. though in a political context, i feel free to say whatever i feel to be true, and help, hopefully, to counter this government’s lies (hah--free speech issue again!); on a personal level, i try (and think we should all try) to consider the impact of our words on others. to boot, sometimes their reaction tells us something about ourselves. i’ve often made the choice to present something in a different way if i thought i might offend a person. on the other hand, where i’ve determined a person is unreasonable and chooses to remain that way, i present things in pretty much any manner i choose or don't bother with the conversation at all.

 

so if charleton heston or rush Limbaugh have anything to say to me, bring them on.

 

off of my soapbox for a long time, i hope (to thunderous applause)! i am happy this is a thinking person’s message board and i am still,

 

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