The Bloody Red Battles Over Black And White genre: Gaylingual & Just Jihad & Polispeak & Six Degrees of Speculation
Black and white...white and black. America has struggled with these two words for decades. No doubt race is the first thought which comes to mind when one mentions black and white...but the issue is much broader than skin color...it encompasses a way of thinking that struggles to see the many shades of gray which occupy the space between two extremes.
Hence, my thoughts on the subject were triggered by four items in the news...all seemingly unrelated though clearly conjoined by the presence of a simmering sickness...one which has at its core a pitiful propensity to view the world and its inhabitants with the forceful, though false safety found in the embracing of extremes.
For most of my life, I've been a doodler...writing and drawing in school notebooks or in any other blank space I could find on an otherwise white piece of paper. By and large, my doodles were mindless acts intended to fill space...both the space on a piece of paper and the empty mental space that often accompanied my own boredom.
However, not long ago, I stopped to think about my doodling and realized that one particular pattern existed...one that was evidenced by years of writing words that are opposites...most frequently the words "sooner" and "later"...all words that are akin to the concept of black and white.
At the same time, my life has been characterized by an effort to see the many shades of gray that one must navigate in order to move from one extreme to the other...so much so that I've often angered individuals on both ends of the philosophical and political spectrums. I view my choice to do so as a decision to remain conflicted...the place from which I've always sought and found my most significant moments of awareness and insight.
Truth be told, choosing to reside in such a state creates anxiety and frustration...but the payoff has always exceeded the cost...payoff that comes in what I've called my periods of hyper-reality. During those intervals, long standing mental logjams are broken and a comforting clarity suddenly emerges in a cascade of cognition. It's as if pieces of a puzzle fall effortlessly into place to reveal a much needed image.
I make mention of my personal experience because I believe it a worthwhile contemplative construct...one that has the potential to move beyond the banality of black and white...and therefore past the animosity which seems to typify our adoption of an architecture of antagonism.
With that contextual background, let's look at the specific news items. First, the observations of Stanley Kurtz on a Salon.com article titled, So Long, White Boy, in which he points to a new book about the Duke lacrosse rape case, Until Proven Innocent, specifically citing this quote from the book, "Duke’s politically-correct faculty...produced a mirror image of the worst racism of the South in the 1950s....". Kurtz raises the prospect that the Duke case and the university response may provide evidence that reverse discrimination is the ultimate product of affirmative action. He concludes with the following.
First the Democrats alienated many white men by supporting discriminatory preferential treatment policies. When these men refused to accept this discrimination, many of them left the Democratic Party. This, in turn, enraged many Democrats, who began to think "invidiously" about white men. So it would appear that racial discrimination in law and policy breeds racial discrimination in culture. If the Democrats lose a large chunk of the "NASCAR Dad" vote in the upcoming elections, it might have something to do with the fact that the Dems richly deserve to lose it.
The second item is the "censoring" of Sally Fields remarks during the Emmy Awards. While accepting her award, Fields, who plays a mother on the television program "Brothers & Sisters", dedicated her award to all of the mothers in the world and stated, "May they be seen; may their work be valued and raised and especially for the mothers who stand with open hearts and wait. Wait for their children to come home from danger and harm's way and war". As she closed her remarks, Fox cut out the following statement.
From The National Post on Canada.com:
"If mothers ruled the ruled the world, there would be no..."
Snip to wide shot.
What was cut (some people saw it live) from the broadcast: "god-damned wars in the first place"
The blogosphere is abuzz with commentary on Field's remarks and the decision by Fox to edit the latter portion. The situation is being characterized differently by those on opposite sides of the political spectrum. One side suggests it is an issue of censorship by right leaning Fox Network and the other side argues that Field's was simply using the Emmy's as a platform for an anti-war tirade.
Consistent with the argument I intend to make, I choose to focus on the dialogue rather than the merits of either position. The following are some of the comments found on the internet.
someone should’ve thrown her off the stage, forget using a cane.
G*****n you, Rupert Murdoch! All Sally was doing was trying to offer the progressive counterpoint to that war-glorifying, Bush-loving, neoconservative medley of talk show one-liners earlier in the broadcast.
Well, if mothers ruled the world in the way Sally meant (i.e. mothers wouldn’t send their own or other people’s children to die in wars, so there wouldn’t be any wars)–what would happen in reality is that a great many Western mothers would indeed keep their children from fighting. However, the Islamist moms around the world would be busily strapping bombs to their babies themselves and shoving them out the door to kill Jews and Americans. Result? We’d lose our culture and our lives. Miserably and quickly.
As any straight man can attest, if women ruled the world there’d still be plenty of wars. They’d just cease to be for discernible reasons. I’ll go hide now.
Confirms that the right-wing corporate establishment cannot survive without war. A threat to war is a threat to their very existence. Manifestly, the anti-war movement is their biggest fear, greater even than an adverse puritanical FCC ruling. Shocking (but predictable).
The third item involves Chris Crocker, the gay man who defended Britney Spears in a tearful YouTube video. Crocker has become the latest celeb of the moment and as so often happens, he has become the focus of mean spirited and malicious comments...comments which clearly seek to use the Crocker situation to push a variety of ideological beliefs.
Most recently, Crocker took issue with a Fox News segment...one which he felt was nothing more than a personal attack by the group of reporters. There are those who defend Fox News, stating that Crocker sought the attention and therefore needs to deal with the consequences...and there are those who feel the Fox segment was homophobic. The following are an example of some of the most heinous comments in response to this latest Crocker video clip.
Clearly ur the most gay and stupid person in the world, why do u wear make-up? Are u a guy who think he's a girl, Or are just a dumb dumb, + UR SO F****D UP! Put a dildo in ur ass a gun in ur mouth and shoot urself!
what a friggin weirdo! I swear if i ever see this person face to face i will kick his/her ass!
hahaha your are sick!!! please do us a favor die soon before someone kill you for good!!!
BTW, If you WERE MORE A WOMAN you wouldnt cry like the little bitch that you are. people get made fun of, deal with it, thats what drives the world.
The final item involves the immigration debate and the belief that the GOP stands to see the gains they made with Hispanic voters under George Bush evaporate in response to perceived prejudice against Mexicans. The two poles of the immigration argument are miles apart. On the one hand, there are those who favor the deportation of all illegal's and the sealing of our border with Mexico. Then there are those who take the opposite view...the one which views the issue as a matter of basic rights and proposes that all illegal's be granted amnesty and that the U.S. make it much easier for Mexicans to immigrate.
Sept. 24, 2007 issue - Lionel Sosa has long been one of the Republicans' most potent weapons come election time. A Hispanic marketing guru, he's crafted successful ad campaigns for presidential candidates from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush aimed at drawing more Latinos into the GOP fold.
But Sosa, who last worked for Bush in 2004, has also been dismayed by the way many GOP candidates have handled the illegal-immigration issue, advocating policies like building a border wall and employing rhetoric that he says is venomous and xenophobic: "It's just an exaggerated, unfriendly position that needlessly turns away Latinos."
Unlike the Democrats, all the Republican presidential candidates, except Sen. John McCain, declined to participate in a debate on the Spanish-language channel Univision, possibly to avoid hostile immigration questioning (the network says it's trying to reschedule). They also ditched conventions earlier this year held by high-profile groups like the National Council of La Raza and NALEO.
Among Latino evangelicals, the portrait's just as bleak. They make up a growing portion of the Hispanic electorate and are twice as likely as Latino Catholics to identify with the GOP, according to Pew Research Center surveys. Yet "right now, the nativist and xenophobic constituency is in charge of the Republican Party," says the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the evangelical National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. "That's a party the Hispanic-American voter cannot support."
Quite frankly, all of these stories are related...related in their evidence of a growing climate of black and white...the need to view all situations and issues with a certainty which cannot be justified or sustained...a certainty born of bias but doggedly disguised as unencumbered eRudytion.
It's a need to determine which race has suffered more from discrimination such that we seemingly need to conclude whether one race has been more aggrieved. What can be achieved in arguing that the white male is the new black male? What is the goal and where and when does it end?
It's the need to prove that the war in Iraq is about the freedom and liberty promised by democracy such that success must and will include the transformation of the world into an image of our liking.
It's the need to characterize civility and a commitment to peace as a gender driven dynamic such that the world cannot function appropriately if one gender holds more power than the other.
It's the need to refute the potential of women of Islam as advocates for peace by defining their religion as evil and thereby associating them with acts of terrorism...all designed to lead one to the tortured conclusion that their annihilation may well be justified.
It's the need to report the news through ideological filters such that news is little more than packaged rhetoric meant to bolster network ratings and define reality. Its a public which seems all too receptive to believing that the news is either black or white...happily stepping over our own responsibility to demand that all news be factual...and doing so with an ill-conceived notion that all will be well if we can only succeed in painting a map of the United States red or blue.
It's the need to identify sexual orientation as the defining moral issue confronting the nation such that individuals like Chris Crocker become lightning rods for the bias and prejudice which seeks to unleash its ugliness by finding its way to the much sought after path of least resistance.
It's the need to vilify Mexicans as a force for the undermining of our cultural identity...all the while ignoring our history as an agglomeration of countless cultural influences...influences which were once thought to be a noble trait and a defining part of our charmed legacy.
It's the willingness of politicians to close their eyes to those walking in the back door because they long ago opened the front door to all those willing to foster and fund their political aspirations.
It's embracing all that is wrong with the construct which posits that the absence of love must be accompanied by the emergence of hate...both in our personal lives and universally in all things that we deem to defy the lazy and illogical labels of black or white.
In a world where proponents of a higher being...a divine creator...prevail...and willfully espouse the inability of science to extricate the intricacies of god's grand design...we willingly bear witness to the audacity which so arrogantly and arbitrarily seeks to attach our own vituperate views to that which we deem to be unacceptably different.
Either we accept the infinite grayness that permeates our perceptive proclivities or we continue down the path of painting ourselves into the dark corners and blinding back rooms which come with an insistence upon the advancement of ideation that is little more than two dimensional delusion.
Unless the battle for black and white gives way to judicious gradations, the red blood which gives each of us life will undoubtedly be the last vague vestige upon the canvas which was intended to represent the enduring achievements of our shared humanity. That's a legacy we can preclude...that's a legacy to lament.
Tagged as: Affirmative Action, Border Security, Chris Crocker, Duke Lacrosse, Emmy Awards, FCC, Fox Network, Homophobia, Immigration, Islam, LGBT, Sally Fields, Stanley Kurtz
Daniel DiRito | September 17, 2007 | 10:32 AM
Comments
1 On September 17, 2007 at 10:53 PM, Ben in Oakland wrote —
Daniel: once again you have hit the nail on the head exactly. It is something I have been trying to articulate for some time--the inability of so many people to see truth, shades of gray, whatever-- all becuase of their ideological blinders. We are so polarized culturally because we are so polarized intellectually, if indeed intellect can be said to be operational at all.
I really admire your perceptiveness and willingness to see as many sides of an issue are there may be. If I were not married already to the best husband in the world, I'd be asking you for a date. can you urn for President?
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