Hobbs: The Gift that Keeps on Giving Gives Again

Y’all, I’m sorry if you come here for the stories about my dog or the frank potty-mouth or the stories about my nether-regions and here I am about to write yet another post on Hobbs, but how can I not?

This guy is the public face of our state GOP.  His job is to craft the message for our state Republicans and his message so far is “Tennessee: We hate Muslims and Mexicans and like to pick on women.”  And the thing is, I know plenty of conservatives in this state and if I had to typify their beliefs, I would typify it as “Tennessee: We love guns and Jesus and not being told what to do.” 

You can imagine locating a business or your family in a state that loves guns and Jesus and not being told what to do.  No matter where your employees are from, no matter what the cultural differences, those are understandable impulses you can get used to, even if you can’t wholly accept them.  But “we hate Muslims and Mexicans and like to pick on women”? 

Anyway, it just seems like there’s this enormous disconnect between what would be a true message about the conservatives in this state (even if that’s a message I disagree with on some fundimental levels) and the message the TNGOP is trying to put out there about conservatives.  And I just wonder how long the Republicans in this state can let that go on.

It’s curious to me.

There are two things I wonder about.  One is that the media is becoming much more emboldened to challenge folks on their nonsense.  I mean, here’s Chris Matthews, who’s basically been self-destructing on camera of the course of the campaign season in shock that a woman could come this close to being president and yesterday, he’s treated like some kind of conquering hero for getting that other joker to admit he didn’t know what he was talking about.

That makes it much more dangerous for flacks to just make baseless assertations as if they will just be accepted as fact, because there is now a sense that mainstream journalists will be rewarded for challenging you.

The second is that it seems to me that the national Republican party knows that they’re in big trouble.  The conventional wisdom in the national party is that folks are not voting for Democrats so much as they’re voting against Republicans.  I mean, may I remind you that they’ve elected a Democrat in Mississippi?  So, how does the national party save itself?

That Mississippi vote might indicate my analysis is wrong, but I think the Republican option is to throw the South under the bus.  That looks to me like the easiest thing for them to do.  They just try to reframe the “problem” with the Republican party as being that they’ve been overrun by the “I hate Muslims and like to pick on women and Love me some Jesus” faction of the party.  And then they promise to fix that by refocusing the party on small government, pro-gun, and pro-business goals.

That’s their winning message.  That’s always been their winning message–”Leave us alone to do our own thing and we’ll make America strong.”–and they can win, repeatedly, on that message (though it may take four years of a non-Republican president to clear the air so that they can win on that message).  They’ve gotten away from that, but they’ll move back to it, because it works.

But in order to move back to it, they’ve got to signal to the country that they’ve marginalized the Republicans who don’t get that message.  That, I think, will mean distancing themselves from southern states like ours in order to put the blame squarely on our shoulders.  Because who else are Southerners going to vote for?

And here’s the GOP in our state crowing on about the wrong message!  Out there basically begging to be marginalized.  And when you read the national news coverage of these kinds of messes, that’s what you see.  That’s how they talk about our state, like we’re some quaint place full of ignoramuses who can’t get with the program, don’t mind Tennessee.

That, my friends, is what hurts all of us–that the TNGOP is out there crafting a message that is interpreted by the rest of the country as meaning that you can just ignore Tennessee, because, well, that’s just them; they don’t get it.

In that spirit, we must now turn to Hobbs.

Today he says:

Look, Dems, you can’t go hangin’ with Hamas, dancing with the dictator of Damascus and telling the tyrants of Terror Central (Tehran) that you’ll chat with them with no pre-conditions, and not have more than a few (million) Americans think you’re a bit soft on the enemy.

I would point out both that Obama never said he would talk to Hamas unconditionally and that McCain said of Hamas:

“They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another,” he said at the time. “And I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas, because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice …

“But it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

And then, in a post so funny I insist you read the whole thing, Hobbs says:

Thursday I was in the Harris-Teeter grocery in Nashville’s Hillsboro Village area - the heart of the city’s most politically liberal neighborhoods. It’s an area where you can still find “Why War?, Wage Peace” signs in front yards, and an area littered with Obama signs.

Let’s go to the instant replay:

Thursday I was in the Harris-Teeter grocery in Nashville’s Hillsboro Village area - the heart of the city’s most politically liberal neighborhoods.

Questions present themselves.

1.  Why does Hobbs shop at the grocery store in the liberal part of town? 

2.  If Hobbs shops among the liberal “elites” doesn’t that, at the least, make him also an “elite”?

3.  Doesn’t Hobbs live in Nashville?

With number three being the most important question.  For those of you who aren’t from Nashville, I invite you to imagine Nashville as a stop sign, or any other hexagon that you like.  And that hexagon is basically divided into six parts by the three interstates that intersect here–I-40, I-24, and I-65.  The area Hobbs is talking about is between I-40 and I-65 on the south side.  It contains three major universities and a lot of university professors and some poor black people who have held onto their houses even in the face of massive regentrification.

Most black neighborhoods in town are north of I-40 (roughly) and the most truly artsy neighborhoods are either betweein I-40 and the capitol or north of I-40.  So, in a town where the three main Democratic voting blocks are established, educated older whites, African Americans, and artsy fartsy young people, two thirds of the voting block lives, predominately, in neighborhoods far away from the Harris Teeter in which Hobbs shops.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the area in which Hobbs shops is quite cute and full of liberal folks.  Heck even I have been known to hang out there on occassion AT THAT HARRIS TEETER.  But to call that the heart of liberal Nashville shows a cluelessness about Nashville that borders on stunning.

I’ve been laughing about it all morning.  If Hobbs thinks the Harris Teeter is some bastion of liberality, I can’t imagine what he’d make of the Lipstick Lounge!

 

Bill Hobbs, The Gift that Keeps on Giving

If we overlook for a second the fact that every time Bill Hobbs puts fingers to keyboard he’s making the state of Tennessee look like a scary backwater unfriendly to all outsiders and the TNGOP look like a bunch of bullies, it’s hard not to enjoy his antics just a little bit.

So, yes, we’re still talking about the whole TNGOP v. Michelle Obama mess and what a hilarious mess it is.  First was the nefarious YouTube clip in which the TNGOP attempted to call into question the patriotism of a woman proudly married to a US Senator who is running for President, which to many folks looked like Hobbs and Smith taking cheap shots at the man’s wife, while also attempting to continue the whole “they aren’t like us” meme, which is, at the end of the day, all they really have, since their candidate is, well, John McCain. 

And now that they’ve yet again embarrassed us on the national stage, we’re into the next-day “can’t you take a joke” spin.  For your enjoyment, I bring you “What?  Everyone we polled at AOL said it was okay that we acted like schoolyard bullies” complete with this awesome line:

Well, at least with the views of the AOL audience - which, incidentally, is known to skew heavily to the Left.

Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.  Oh, yeah, you find all the hipsters and cool cats on AOL, don’t cha know?  Are they even still in business? 

I swear, I know the TNGOP is going to do what they like and apparently they like the attention Hobbs and Smith bring them, but if I found my communications director trying to pass of AOL as a hotbed of liberalness, like that’s conventional wisdom, I’d spend the weekend questioning whether I was getting my money’s worth out of him.  Once he spouts crap like that, would you ever trust him to give you the truth about how the internet works?  I doubt many Obama supporters even know what AOL is.

What’s next?  Is Hobbs going to complain about those kids today driving around listening to that heavy metal music in their Oldsmobiles?

And then the “I’m just a dottering old man who doesn’t like these kids today with their loud music and their brash wives” complaining continues on the TNGOP’s own site:

Judging from the temper tantrum they’re tossing today over our light-hearted video holding Michelle Obama accountable for scripted remarks she made on two separate occasions on the campaign trail on behalf of her husband, the answer is “yes.”

See, it was just light-hearted.  Just a joke supposed to show what an uppity bitch Obama is and to remind Mr. Obama that he needs to keep his wife in line.  You know, it’s so light-hearted to joke about a man needing to learn to keep his wife in line.

Except, that it is kind of funny, but not for the reason the TNGOP intends.  I mean, here we are living in a state in which the Democratic party is a bunch of corrupt, out-of-touch nimrods and the best the Republicans can do to counteract that is to position themselves as the party of mean old people who hate everybody.

It would be sad if it wasn’t so damn funny.

(See Tiny Pasture.)

What?! No Jimmie Rodgers?

EW has the 25 country albums you should own even if you don’t like country (or some such similar conceit).  I point it out only because a.) I’ve heard a lot of shit about what the Country Music Hall of Fame will or won’t do and I myself have maybe even a time or two been known to grouch about the bizarro choices the Hall of Fame makes and how they make them (starting with their utterly stupid and making-impossible-to-take-them-seriously insistence on people referring to it as the Country Music Hall of Fame ™.  Talk about making you look third rate.), but I have never heard that Gram Parsons has no chance of ever ending up in the Hall.

Is that true?  And, if it is, what’s to stop Gram Parsons fans from making a plaque, smuggling it into the hall, and supergluing it to the wall?  It’s not like someone goes in there every day and counts the faces.  The reverence with which people treat institutions they have little respect for just kills me.

But that’s country music for you, right there, folks.

And b.) that article, if you look beyond the mere words, is a perfect illustration of how country music works.  Here, for your edification, is a brief history of country music.

Group A: But we’ve always done it this way and we like it.

Group B: Too bad.  It’s our time now.

Group A: You have no respect for tradition.

Group B: But we’re rich, so we’re right.

Group C: We’re going to try something new.

Group B: But we’ve always done it this way and we like it.

Group C: Too bad.  It’s our time now.

Group B: You have no respect for tradition.

Group C: But we’re rich, so we’re right.

Group D: We’re going to try something new.

And so on.

I Dare You Not to Laugh

Really, it brings a whole new twist to the shade tree mechanic phenomenon.

more cat pictures

Attention, My Fellow Feminists

Many of you are yet again threatening to not vote for Obama, should he become the Democratic nominee, because he is a sexist pig.

I must remind you that there is a world of difference between “sweetie” and “cunt.”  And as much as I despise being called “sweetie,” I hate being called “cunt” a whole lot worse.

If Obama is the Democratic nominee and you don’t vote for him, you will be helping to elect a man who calls his wife “cunt” in public.  You will be helping to elect a man from a party that thinks taking cheap shots at a woman not even running for office is acceptable.  You will be helping to elect a man who can’t imagine ending this war, which has been devastating to the women of Iraq and a grueling strain on the women of the armed forces (and the wives and daughters of the men of the armed forces), until 2013 at the earliest.

You want to play chicken with our future?

Fine.

I can issue ultimatums, too.

If you help to elect John McCain, who is running as a Bush 3.0, if you help elect a man whose every campaign promise seems to share a core of increasing suffering in the world, history will view you as idiots.

Neither Clinton nor Obama is a perfect candidate.  But either of them is one million times better than McCain.

I don’t care how you do it.  Hold your nose.  Promise yourself you’ll do this one thing and then you’re seriously moving to Canada.  Get so drunk you won’t remember voting for Obama.  Vote for Obama and write in “Fucky McFuckerson (D)” for every other race.  Vote for Obama and then print yourself up a bunch of “Chelsea Clinton 2016″ shirts and start campaigning.  Whatever you need to do to get yourself at peace with it.

But you have got to make an effective vote against McCain.

If you don’t, his presidency is on your hands.

Radical Leftists, in Context

I just got off the phone with the recalcitrant brother who is rapidly becoming the radical leftist among his group of friends.  I can’t tell you how funny this strikes me, but apparently knowing your Bible and a little bit about Malcolm X makes you a commie in his world.

He’s down there in Georgia trying to drum up support for Obama (there is no talk among his peers of voting for Clinton, the idea is so preposterous to them, for what it’s worth) but his peers are all afraid that Obama will “let the Muslims into the country” and the recalcitrant brother said that he blew their minds when he told them that there were white Muslims.

He also reports that many of them feel like a vote for Obama would be wasted because none of them believe he’ll live to serve out his whole presidency.

I was listening to NPR last night and they were talking to the guy who wrote the Washington Post story about the racism that Obama workers have encountered when out there drumming up support for Obama and the reporter was talking about how this is a kind of underreported story.

The interviewer asked him about the destroyed campaign headquarters and why that didn’t make more national news, why the Obama camp wanted to downplay it.  And I forget what he said, basically something like they didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.

But I was thinking back, too, to back when African Americans were so wary of voting for Obama and were still throwing their support behind Clinton and the sense I got, at least among folks down here, was that they didn’t believe he ever could serve as president, that he would be killed either before he got into office or while in office.

And remember that that was one of the reasons Colin Powell’s wife asked him not to run.

I think that the Obama campaign has been trying hard to pitch a message that is something like “Yes, we are all different, and yes, we have our disagreements, and, yes, there is racism in America, but it’s not like it was, and we can all come together.”

Shoot, even I was arguing that the West Virginia vote wasn’t about racism.

But, I don’t know.  I talk to the recalcitrant brother and it reminds me that these divisions are still fresh and ugly and potentially violent, that there are folks who saw the assassinations of King, Kennedy, and X* as effective means of making their political points.  And I think it’s reasonable for other folks to be concerned about that.

But you don’t want to give into fear, I guess, too, right?

I don’t know.  To me, that’s why it’s so important to speak out about the racism that has permeated this whole race, because there are people out there who believe that assassinating someone is an effective form of political protest and then there’s a larger group of folks whose racist beliefs help aid and comfort and reassure the first group that it’s okay to take that step.

Well, I’ve gotten off course.

My point was originally just that it’s funny that the recalcitrant brother is by far the most conservative person in our family and yet is somehow the most radical person in his peer group.

*None of the recalcitrant brother’s friends–black or white–believe Malcolm X was killed by black men.

Zeus

A girl should probably finish a book before reviewing it, but I’m going to tell you right now that I’m totally digging Zeus by Tom Stone.  It’s both a personal and historical biography of the god and I just adore the way that Stone manages to straddle the line between treating the stories with reverance and making sure that his audience understands the history that informs the stories.

He does an excellent job, I think, of explaining how the Proto-Indo-European sky god, Dieus, finds his continuation through Zeus and, if you look carefully at Dieus (sometimes called something like Dyaus Fater or Dyaus Pater) you can see how we continue to invoke some memory of him when we call on the gods Zeus, Jupiter, and Tyr.

I often wonder about that–when many different names refer to the same god and when they refer to different gods.  I’m prepared to believe that Gotan, Wodan, Odin and Othinn are all the same god under slightly different names.  And maybe I’m okay with believing that Jupiter and Zeus are two expressions of the same god.  But I’m not so ready to believe that Jupiter and Zeus and Tyr are.  Even though I’m perfectly fine with believing that they are indeed continuations of the same god.

A theory we’ve discussed before for why the northern gods are so interested in the lives of humans is that their experience of time is much differen than ours.  For them, the present, the past, and the future are all jumbled together in some way we don’t understand.  Baldar, for instance, is dead and not yet dead and not yet even born.  Loki is Odin’s blood brother.  Loki has already betrayed the gods. The world is ending and it is just beginning.

But we experience time linearly.  We have a past, a present, and a future and because of this, we can do something that the gods cannot.  We can change the future.

Which means that the only possibility the gods have for change comes through us.  That’s their stake in us.  We bring change into their world through bringing change into our own.

That is, I think, part of the lifecycle of the gods that we don’t quite get, steeped as we are in the mythology of a god who clearly changes but claims he doesn’t.  But this is how gods reproduce and pass along their wisdom, through the change people make in the heavens.

For thousands of years, Zeus didn’t have a body.  And then we gave him one.  And then we relegated him to myth.  And then folks came to admit that they believed those myths were true.  And so he returned.  And so on and so on.

Anyway, it’s a great bookand I’m really enjoying it.

Happy Day

Well, Massachusetts let gay people get married and the world didn’t end, but maybe that’s just because it wasn’t a big enough state.  But now, one in ten Americans lives in a place where gay people can get married.  Surely, two people who love each other being able to make a legal committment to each other and enjoy the protection of the law is a cause for great concern and thus must surely bring about the wrath of someone.

Starting just about now.

Or now.

Um, right now.

Okay, now.

Anything?

Hmm. 

Anyway, I tease, but I really do think it’s nice.  Congratulations, Californians.

Here’s to hoping we’ll see the rest of the country go your way soon.

BREAKING NEWS! White Man Proud of Country!

When you hang around the blogosphere a while, you begin to suspect certain things about people.  I am convinced, as you know, that Nate the Pan-Galactic Blogger Blaster is an undercover FBI agent.  And I grow more and more convinced that Bill Hobbs is a creation of The Onion.

Mmm. Here, We Eat Dirt and We Like It

Today the TNGOP is urging radio stations across the state to play “patriotic” music in order to show Michelle Obama how much Tennessee loves America, unlike Michelle Obama, who hates America so much she’s married to a U.S. senator.  Because, of course, that’ll learn her.

On the one hand, I have to admit, I love this stuff, watching Hobbs act like some two-bit hack blogger.  On the other hand, it’s kind of embarrassing to watch Hobbs acting like some two-bit hack blogger now that he’s got this big important political job.

I mean, please.  Is this their argument?  Don’t vote for Obama, his wife’s not grateful enough?

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Why You Should Buy a House with Kathy T., Even if You Don’t Need One

She has snacks!  She piles you and your loved ones in her car and gives you snacks!  America, if there’s anything more pleasant than driving around town, munching on snacks, and looking at houses, I can’t think of what it is.

And I can’t think of what it is because I’m a little fried after a day of driving around town, munching on snacks, and looking at houses.

We must have looked at nearly twenty houses and by the end, we were just aimlessly circling blocks because those blocks contained young, shirtless, sports-playing men playing sports without their shirts on.  We were having profound philosophical discussions about how, if you had to live in a neighborhood with a clear gang problem in a house right next door to an active crack house (I should point out that this is my typification of the neighborhood, not Kathy’s), would you want to live in the neighborhood with the glistening, muscular, shirtless young men playing basketball or the glistening, muscular, shirtless young men playing soccer?

I, myself, lean towards the soccer players, because they have such nice butts.  Still, to each their own.

The Butcher brought a camera to take pictures of the houses.  I now have a camera full of pictures of the Nashville skyline and snails.

Anyway, it was a good day, but it was kind of a bust.  We saw some houses that had been rehabbed, but had floors so soft and rolling I was a little afraid we might fall through from just the weight of the three of us.  We saw some homes in neighborhoods so sketchy I didn’t want to get out of the car.  We saw rehabbed homes that looked like they’d been rehabilitated by guys on acid, with cabinets that didn’t line up and counter tops that seemed to have come from other houses and ceilings in one room lower than ceilings in another.  And I can’t even begin to tell you how many “two bedroom” homes are counting on you not minding that one of the bedrooms has two doors because it’s basically also functioning as a hallway or how many “three bedroom” places are counting the room they’ve converted from the garage with a door to the outside as a bedroom.  Is there high demand for having a door to the outside in your bedroom?

And, oh, the tiny kitchens.  The teeny tiny kitchens, without dishwashers.  And the rooms added on by just enclosing porches or garages or whatever.

We saw a lot of houses that, if put in the hands of a good rehabber, could be amazing places to live, but, of course, we don’t have those skills or the money to pay someone else to do it.

I think we’re going to have to broaden our search.

You Mean, It’s not All Wine and Roses After the Illegals Go Home?!

I’m supposed to be in Inglewood in an hour and I’m not even in the shower yet (the Butcher’s not even up).  So, I leave you with this post from elle, phd about how employers calling ICE in is not about protecting hard working Americans, but about a larger strategy of intimidating the work force.

Lovely.

Anyway, this is some crucial reading.

The F*** You Factor

Everybody’s talking about why Obama can’t win Appalachia and the reasons seem to range from David Oatney’s elitist diatribe against elitism (I think, though I could be wrong, with his use of “effete” and while at the same time bragging about his own family, that he’s not opposed to elitism, he just doesn’t like the soft, almost-”faggy” kind) in which he claims that Obama can’t win in Appalachia because his supporters are pompous jerks who think they’re better than the “regular folks” from Appalachia.

Of course, this makes no sense because if there’s one group that everybody makes fun of with impunity and who almost everybody else thinks is a bunch of inbred idiots running around raping tourists and marrying their cousins all while listening to the dulcet strains of NASCAR, it’s folks from Appalachia.  If Appalachians want to decline to vote for people who look down their noses at them, they are left with only voting for old school country musicians and I don’t recall Ralph Stanley running for President this year, though the libertarians keep switching candidates so I just could have missed it.

Then Josh Marshall chimes in with his theory that the folks in Appalachia just don’t like black people because they are violent, self-reliant ignoramuses who see black folks as a symbol of the inegalitarian stratified slave-holding coastal monied South they could not be a part of.

This also makes little sense for a lot of reasons but the main one is that THERE ARE AND HAVE BEEN BLACK PEOPLE LIVING IN APPALACHIA.  Where do you think the “tri” in tri-racial isolates comes from?  White, indigenous, and Martian?

Now, I’m not any smarter than David Oatney or Josh Marshall so I’m probably not going to come up with any better reason why Appalachians aren’t voting for Obama than they are, but this being the internet and me being me, I’m going to give it a try.

I think that Appalachians aren’t voting for Obama because fuck him.

Why?

I’m sure for some folks it’s because he’s black.  And for some folks because he’s a secret Muslim.  And for some folks because he’s got book-learning.  Whatever.  It doesn’t matter.  Just fuck him.

But mainly, it’s because of the audacity of hope, I think.

When you are a group of people who has repeatedly been kicked in the teeth every time you turned your face to the sun to enjoy just a sliver of beauty, when you have given generations of your family to work under mountains struggling to carve coal out of rocks to set aside a little for your family to do a little better only to have the coal companies up and leave town, when you bring industry to your community only to find them poisoning your water and putting their slushy garbage in ponds above your schools, when your kids are disproportionately the ones who fight and die in wars, when the only thing the people around you want to do is escape, either through fleeing to the cities or through drinking or drugs, when any fool with a Bible can call himself pastor and encourage you to pick up snakes and drink poison, what’s hope?

It’s got to seem like so much bullshit.

So, fuck him.

I think what Oatney won’t admit (but is hinting at) and what Marshall can’t understand is that asking people to have hope when there is so little reason for it is, yes, inspiring to some, but to others?

To others it sounds like just another in a long line of sweet talking folks making a lot of promises that, if you dare to put your faith in them, will bite you in the ass as hard as it can.

I mean, come on.  We all know these folks aren’t so much for Clinton as they are against Obama, because we know they don’t normally like Clinton.  She’s still the same old castrating she-devil feminist bitch who can’t keep her man at home they’ve always hated and I just can’t believe they’ve suddenly discovered that she’s just a person and not the symbol of all that’s wrong with America that she used to be.

I think it’s just that what she represents is, to the folks in Appalachia, much less potentially painful for them than Obama, and so fuck him, they’re throwing their lot in with her.

The Nashvillest

So, I went to check out The Nashvillest because both Newscoma and Chris Wage recommended it (and I do everything Newscoma and Chris Wage both recommend.  That’s how I ended up with this giant back tattoo that says “Newscoma and Chris Wage” in Latin.  Or so they say.  I don’t know Latin, so I don’t really know.  I’m hoping it says that, anyway.) and I cannot second their recommendation enough.

I didn’t know Nashville lacked such a thing, but now that I see it, I love it.

Ugh, I’m Full and a Little Sad

Today I saw a house on line so cute I had to drive over and eat it up.  Just put it in my mouth and chomp, chomp, chomp.  So, I drove over to check it out and it has no yard!  None at all.  Six and a half blades of grass attempt to scatter themselves about just trying to give it a good show, but there’s nothing.  It’s like half a lot or something.  I don’t know.  I’m just crushed.

I don’t need a big lot or anything, but I must be able to at least have a back yard that is bigger than me.

I wonder if it would be feasible to buy a lot and steal the house and put it on the lot I bought.

I am Too Immature for My Job

Today, I received an email containing the answer to my quandary about how one encapsulates both Don Quixote and The Matrix in one image.

And let’s just say that, while there’s nothing specifically untoward about the picture of the young man*, I don’t believe I’ve ever been so scandalized by the hint of a little hair.

You know…

Down there.

———-

*The photos on this page are cropped but still may not be safe for work unless you’re used to shouting “Oh my!” unbidden at your desk.

Also, I don’t know Spanish, so there may be something scandalous and inappropriate written on the page I’m linking to, but let’s assume that it’s just what it looks like, a bunch of artists farting around in front of a most post-modern Cervantes.

Length or Width?

Bob Tuke is walking across Tennessee.

To prove something. I’m unclear as to what, other than that he’s a dumbass.

We used to ask my Grandma A. to tell us about the good ole days and she would say “I had to go around every morning and collect everyone’s chamber pots and clean them out. It took us all day to cook dinner. And we had it good. You’ll never convince me that a world full of toilets and microwaves is somehow worse than when I grew up.”

I feel that way about Bob Tuke’s gambit. Rather than walking across Tennessee, why don’t you drive an hour, stop, and spend the time you would have spent walking actually talking and listening to folks and their concerns? Enjoy the technology previous generations of Tennesseans brought to us.

This just reminds me of what strikes me as not quite right about Tuke.  He’s a nice guy and he means well, but he just doesn’t quite get it, I don’t think.

Don’t try to gimmick me into believing that you’re some kind of regular joe.  Just be one.

What’s Good for the Goose is Good for the Gander

It’s funny to watch your ideological opponants come around to “discovering” that what you’ve been saying all along is true.

Bill Hobbs, for instance, says:

The first goal of a bureaucracy is self-preservation of the bureaucracy, and the best tools to achieve that goal are expanding the size and scope of the bureaucracy and extending its reach further and further into more and more people’s lives.

Was he talking about the TNGOP’s efforts to extend the government’s reach into my vagina?  No, of course not.  But isn’t it funny to see these folks who are constantly braying for the government to intrude into the my personal decisions right here in this state moaning about the government of another state intruding into those people’s personal decisions?

And then, here’s Ben Cunningham trying to sound the alarm about how more men are losing jobs than women (a kind of gendered recession, if you will). To which I ask, “Oh, excuse me, isn’t that how your beloved free market works?  Here are a bunch of overeducated folks who are still paid less than this group of undereducated folks for bullshit reasons we’ve been complaining about since the 70s and earlier and your feelings are hurt that the cheap educated labor is in higher demand than the expensive uneducated labor?  Well, then, sweetie, maybe you should have fought harder for us to be paid the same as you.  Sucks when the uneven playing field backfires on you, doesn’t it?”

It’s not that I’m not sympathetic.  I am.

It’s just that we’ve been saying for a long time that these mindsets are going to bite us all in the ass and the conservatives have been acting as if, as long as what’s happening doesn’t affect them, it’s okay.

And, frankly, it’s not okay.

(See, Newscoma for more about the not-okay-ness of our current situation.  Please dwell upon these sentences: “We are sharing food at the office. Some folks don’t eat if we don’t so we do.”  And let me make it clear what you are reading here.  Working people cannot afford to eat and buy gas.  Rex Tillerson, who runs Exxon Moble makes over four million dollars a year.  Just saying.)

An Open Letter to Engineers who Deal with Water

Dear Engineers,

I just read this post by Redneck Mother, which you should read, too.

I’ll wait here.

Here’s my question.  Could New Orleans have a safer life, granted, as a smaller city, if the main branch of the Mississippi didn’t run through it?

It’s clear that the river is trying to flip main channels and run to the Gulf through the Atchafalaya River.  At this point, why are we stopping it?  Doesn’t it seem more reasonable to tell people right now, “Hey, the river’s coming and we can’t stop it.  Yes, voluntarily giving up your towns (and granted we will lose some towns) is going to be rough.  But a lot less rough that what will happen when the river finds its way around what we’ve done.”  And this seems to me like it would take a lot of the strain off the levees in New Orleans along the river.

I don’t know.  Clearly, there are some holes in my reasoning.

But I’m just curious as to why we don’t let the river do what rivers do, especially since artificially keeping it from doing that seems to be exacerbating a problem.

Curiously,

Aunt B.

 

An Open Letter to You Gun Nuts

Dear Gun Nuts,

As you know, I read you faithfully, even though I disagree with just about everything you say (except when Say Uncle says kind things about me; I think we both know I agree with saying nice things about me) and I have come to learn some important things.

One, treat every gun as if it is loaded.

Two, don’t point at anything you don’t want to shoot.

Three, keep your finger off the trigger unless you are fixing to shoot something in the next second.

Four, the stuff that comes out of a barrel of a gun can kill you by driving pieces of metal into you.  It does this by being propelled by an explosion cause by gunpowder.

Five, things can still be dangerous, years after being made, hence the trouble with leaving, say, landmines around.

I have come to accept these five things as Truth. (Ha, and it looks as if y’all have trained me well in your rules, even though I didn’t know they were actual rules.)

So, I find it hard to make sense of the story of poor Sam White.  Why would he have been trying to “restore” something he surely should have called the bomb squad in to deal with?

Confusedly,

Aunt B.

May I Brag On My Dad a Little Bit?

Usually, a girl gets one present a year from her folks for her birthday.  This year, apparently, my dad is doing the purchasing, since he’s got nothing else to do but sit around the house and heal up (well, and get ready to retire, but so far that seems to consist of him saying “You want to fight about what at which board meeting?  Let’s schedule that for June 23.  Did I mention my last day is June 21?  Oh, hi, yes, you want to piss and moan about what at which gathering? How’s June 20 work for you?  Did I mention I can’t retire on the 21st because that’s our wedding anniversary?  I must make the 19th my last day.”

Mom said something recently about the 8th being his last day.  I would just point out that, as you Methodists surely know, he’s supposed to stick it out until Moving Day that first week in July.

God, that cracks me up.).

Anyway, so my birthday isn’t even until next week (which I am celebrating by attending the International Country Music Conference, with a big black marker and rebranding it the International Aunt B. Conference, just letting you participants know ahead of time that I expect your papers to somehow reflect the new theme of the conference), but the presents have already started to roll in from my dad.  First, there was the gold earrings I needed, but didn’t remember telling him about–gold hoops with actual gold posts, so that they wouldn’t turn my ears green.

And then… And then… My dad bought me black wool yarn so that I could make myself a witch’s hat.  He bought me a set of crochet hooks in ascending sizes so that I can stop making everything with my awesome K hook. 

And today I got Tom Stone’s biography of Zeus.

I about fell over.  Frankly, it shocked me even more than him using “gay” in a non-perjorative way and that was so shocking that the Butcher and I were still mulling it over this weekend.

The BBC’s Robin Hood

I have to confess that I cannot watch that show.

And here’s why.  This, my friends, is the hero of the show.  And this is supposed to be the guy we hate.  But I ask you, my friends, who can believe it would be such a horrible fate for Maid Marion to end up with him?  And there’s no Roger Miller.  You could make do missing one or the other, but not both.

My Happy Thoughts

Today, the dog was laying in the sun, all curled up with her snout pointed at me and I had to stop what I was doing and lay down with her, curled like two c’s, there in the warmest spot in the house.

Every day, I feel very lucky to have her and I am embarrassed at how much I thought my parents taking her in was a mistake.  I mean, yes, it was a mistake and yet, it has unfolded into one of my greatest fortunes.

I think about that in terms of y’all.  When I first started blogging, I was a lonely, weird, introverted, uncomfortable mess who lived in Nashville, but not really in Nashville and thanks to you, I’m now a happy, weird mess who’s going to buy a house!

I don’t know.  It’s hard for me to say how much it means to me to have you as my community.  It sounds so cheesy and yet where else can a person like me go and ask a question like “what should I be on the look out for?” and get such damn good answers, thoughtful responses, and stuff?

Thanks so much, you guys.

Really, if I ever see you napping in a sunny spot, expect me to snuggle up next to you and rub your nose and tell you what good readers you are and how happy you make me.

Misheard Lyrics Better Than the Right Ones

Yesterday, we were driving around listening to this group the Butcher likes, which I have never heard of (he told me not to admit this to you, because, according to him, it will give you the impression that I have been living in a cave… Ooo, speaking of caves, I wonder if the old Demonbreun place is available?), My Morning Jacket and I thought we were listening to a song with the lyrics “Another Heartbreak for Breakfast” and I was like “Wow, that’s really powerful” but no, it was something else, not that great.

Which reminds me that when the Boston contingency was going to Graceland, I was reading up on Paul Simon’s lyrics to the applicable song and it turns out that it is “As if I didn’t know that, as if I didn’t know my own bed.”

What?!

I have, all these years, heard that as “As if I didn’t know that, as if I didn’t know my own heart,” which, clearly, you can see, is a million times better.

In fact, now that I think about that, you could probably combine those two snippets into a song that would make folks cry just to hear it.

Reproductive Justice

I told the Archcrone that I would blog about reproductive freedom issues today but I got busy doing other things.  I do, however, want to point you to her post and to Rachel’s post.  Reading them together gives you a pretty scary picture of where we are as a state.  For instance, in Rachel’s post, we learn that folks are all upset about Planned Parenthood having a fund-raiser for Mother’s Day.  In the Archcrone’s post, we learn that there are 19 counties in Tennessee with no ob/gyn.  Our infant mortality rate in 2004 was 8.6 per thousand births and we don’t even track pregnancy-related complications that kill the mother.

But here’s the thing I cannot stop thinking about: this report that the Archcrone links to.  In 2006 just over one in ten girls between the ages of 10 and 17 in the state of Tennessee gave birth (3552 births or 11%) but almost 14% (4378) of girls between the ages of 10 and 17 were pregnant.  One hundred and twenty of those girls were younger than 14.  In Davidson county, there were twenty of these girls.  In Shelby county, there were sixty-two.

I will repeat that.  In 2006, there were 120 girls younger than 14 in Tennessee who were pregnant.  Twenty of those girls came from here.  Sixty-two came from Shelby county.

I was reading the Helter Shelter archives over at the Scene and the dude said something about how the trouble with contractors from Tennessee is that, like all Tennesseans, they have an independent streak a mile wide and, if they don’t know something, they’ll just make it up.

I keep thinking about that, from a lot of angles, when I look at trying to figure out how we might fix this stuff.  I mean, when you think that thirteen percent of teenage girls were pregnant in 2006 and that that’s an improvement over where we were ten years ago when the rate was one in five or back in 1990, when it was over one in four (and if you want to think about something scary, think about how the pregnant teenage girls in 2006 are, in part, the daughters of the pregnant girls from 1990, which means, women my age becoming grandmothers), how can you not despair when you think about them trying to make a better life for their families?

It’s just a fact: if an individual woman cannot decide for herself what happens to her body, she cannot be free.  A woman cannot decide for herself what happens to her body if she is not taught about her body and how it works.  A woman cannot decide for herself what happens to her body if she does not have access to the healthcare she needs when she needs it. And a woman cannot decide for herself what happens to her body if she is being preyed on by evil jackasses (dudes who fuck 11 year olds).

And if a woman cannot decide for herself what happens to her body, she is severely hampered in her abilities to achieve economic independence and security.  I mean, if she’s not in control of herself, how can we even talk about economic independence?

I don’t know.  I’m tired and I’m angry at child-fuckers and I’m so damn tired of this state playing “It’s all about saving the babies” when there are at least a hundred living breathing little girls every year who needed saving from the fuckers who exploited them and knocked them up and we didn’t do jack shit for them.

I know, I know, it’s so much easier to love an ideal, to love the little babies in your imagination, all pure and innocent and deserving, and much less easy to go to the mat for actual people who frequently let you down.  And so we all get in our vehicles and drive through the streets of Knoxville mourning our great tragedy while meanwhile we revel in our abstinence only education, we glory in our party bunkers while family services go under funded, and so on and so on.

But hey, whatever.

Happy mother’s day, y’all.

May next year, the number of children joining the ranks of mother continue to decline.