One of the more fun rants that I’ve read this month! read the whole thing.
Let’s see a few things that are tangential but I believe relevant.
-The social safety net of the USA and probably the world was started by FDR an US elite who traces his ancestry to early US Presidents. Franklin Delano Roosevelt never knew hunger and or poverty as a state yet he has done more than but a handful of people to establish most of what US citizens know as the social safety net.
-The Civil Rights Act although was a bill that was to be sponsored by John F Kennedy but was made into law during LBJ Lyndon B Johnson’s presidency. LBJ and JFK have never been black/african american. Yet the Civil Rights Act has been one of the landmark bills to have helped african americans.
-In the same vein Abe Lincoln has never been an african american yet…(tinatamad na akong ipagpatuloy)
If the only reason you are going to vote Manny Villar over Perlas, Gordon, Gibo , Aquino is that he used to be poor , fuck democracy. I’m beginning to be convinced that a democracy not anchored by an educated middle class is untenable. I know it’s hard to believe but look at it this way. Your doctor has probably never had a brain tumor yet you believe your doctor when he/she advises your treatment. Same with your lawyer (Sorry lawyer friends I had to take a dig, well nobody actually trust their lawyers some lawyers are just less bad as others).
I know this might bite me in the ass in May but we were given a brain to override the emotions that would make us do irrational things or short circuit decision making that is really not that good for us. Think responsibly. My god just think please! (I think there is a possibility that I will vote for Villar)
You know, I just realized how many errant Google hits that title is going to bring. Creepy.
This will just break Neil’s heart, as he does see me as a champion of fighting regionalism, but this CNN piece (from over at Atrios) is the sort of thing that, Jesus H*. Christ on a crutch, gives me a headache. They send a reporter to literally Middle America, and surprise, discover that they don’t much care for them Hollywood movies. Suuuurrr-prise!
But one chunk of this report, to me, is symptomatic of a larger issue that grinds my molars.
ANDERSON: We stopped by the Lebanon [Kansas — ed.] hotspot, Ladow’s Market, where one local told us Hollywood just can’t relate to a farming way of life.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They’ve never been back in here to know what it’s like to actually have to make a living doing this.
You know what, Unidentified Male? You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to have to make a living farming. NOBODY DOES.
For chrissake, only 17% of Americans live in rural settings anymore. Only 2 million of those people work on farms or ranches (USDA figures). Hell, only ten percent of the average farm family’s income even comes from farming anymore (did you know that? I didn’t. Funky). The median age of the United States is 37. I am more than willing to point out that the agriculture industry is a crucial, nay vital part of the American economic infrastructure generating a sizable amount of the GDP. But why in the name of John Deere’s Blood-Soaked Wood-Chipper Gears, every time I hear a news report on what “real Americans” think do I wind up watching some farmer in their fifties and sixties bitch as they survey the blasted plains landscape behind them, and not only that, somehow their cultural observations are assumed to have more relevance than anyone else’s?
This is only half-rant. The honest question is, what in the American character keeps us returning to this completely false self-image? Seriously, how did we get to a point where this report may as well have started: “Hi there, Carol, we’re about to talk to people twenty years older than the average American living a lifestyle less than one in five average Americans live … to find out what the average American thinks” and somehow nobody blinks an eye?
There are four times as many Americans living in urban than rural areas. There are four times as many people sucking back coffee in New York city alone than make a living farming. According to the Burea of Labor, there are just as many people employed in Architecture and Engineering as farming, hell, 3 million people working in Computer and Mathematical jobs. But when one of these “What does America think about culture” pieces comes on, do I ever see a mid-30’s software engineer onscreen bitching about having to download BitTorrents of “The IT Crowd”? Fuck and no.
Four million people in the US play World of Warcraft. And yet, do I ever hear:
Four million people in the US play World of Warcraft. And yet, do I ever hear:
via Kung Fu Monkey: Farm Fetish.
