In a previous post, I commented how classism (the categorization of the public based on wealth) has become a new form of racism. To drive the point home, I thought I’d write a short post on the subject of gated communities.

For any of you who don’t know what a gated community is, it’s a middle or upper class (usually upper class) residential area surrounded by a fence/gate/barrier (and occasionally a guard post). There may also be various rules within the community governing such things as speed limits and the like.

At first glance this might seem harmless or perhaps even slightly Marxist in nature. What could be wrong with a group of people living together, protecting themselves with a wall, and regulating their neighborhood? Absolutely nothing- if this was the Stone Age and there were dire wolves and smilodons wandering around outside. In reality these gated communities exist solely as a form of segregation.

It may sound harsh, but let’s look at the facts. A gated community isn’t any more secure than a regular neighborhood. The few walls too tall to simply clamber over can be conquered with the aid of a footstool, and if there’s a guard at the gate, he’ll probably be little more than ornamental- if a burglar wants to get into the community, chances are he’s not going to try to stroll in through the gate. In short, the walls are pointless- serving only to act as a symbolic separation between those within and those without.

And of course, that’s not the only issue. As mentioned, there are often various rules within the community, especially in regards to speed limits. Now one might wonder why this is an issue. Well, when it comes down to it, there isn’t any good reason for the community creating separate rules. The laws of physics are the same both inside and outside the community, rain falls on both the gated and ungated roads alike, and the sidewalk isn’t going to stop icing over once it enters Whitewood or Sun Mountain or whatever pretentious name the community has. The sole purpose of these rules is separation from those outside.

So what’s the big deal? The problem with these gated communities isn’t the walls or the rules, but the psychological and ideological effects they have. The walls and barriers that serve merely to separate rather than protect make a pretty elitist statement- that those inside wish to be separated from the rest of society. The purposeless rules do the same, creating the illusion that things are different inside the community. Considering that those inside the communities are almost always more wealthy than those outside, gated communities only perpetuate classism. Let the facts be faced, segregation is wrong no matter what the rationale behind it. No matter where the line is drawn that seperates “us” and “them”, that line is wrong.

Perhaps the greatest lie originating (and arguably, perpetuated by) Capitalism is the idea that the wealthy are wealthy because they are intelligent, disciplined, and hardworking and the poor are poor because they are ignorant and lazy. As a result, if a man in a business suit and flawless grammar knocks on your door and asks if he can use your bathroom, chances are you’ll let him. You probably wouldn’t do the same for a man in a ragged bathrobe whose grasp of the English language was sub-average. Indeed, the quality of treatment you offer people is usually determined by what social class they hail from. We make assumptions about people based on whether or not they seem to be poor, middle-class, or wealthy.

Quite simply, we’re bigots.

And not without reason either. If a person is less willing to let a homeless man into his house than a man who is (or at least, seems to be) doing quite well for himself, then the person’s fear is not completely unfounded. A wealthy man has less reason to rob you than a poor man. Crime rates, alcoholism, and drug abuse are highest among the lower classes. Likewise the poorer classes tend to have the lowest levels of education. Statistically speaking, yes, you are more likely to be mugged by a poor person than a rich one, but so what? Bigotry is never tolerable, no matter what. So what if you’re more likely to be mugged if you get a poor guy into your house instead of a rich one? You don’t know either man. Maybe the man in the bathrobe is an honest, honorable person who’s had a run of bad luck. Maybe the man in the suit is a sociopathic murderer or a con artist. Judging people according to how wealthy they are is, no matter how you look at it, wrong!

So why is it that we’re bigoted to trust the middle-class and wealthy rather than the poor? Is it because the poor are ignorant and criminal while the wealthy are intelligent and decent? Of course not! The poor aren’t poor because they’re criminals; the poor have high crime levels because they are poor. Sure the poor man is more likely to mug you, but is that because of him or the fact that he’s cold and hungry? Obviously there are those who are poor because of their own issues- all humans have a propensity towards greed and indolence. At the same time, it is ridiculous to claim that the poor are only poor because they’re lazy. It’s the poorest of the poor who have the heaviest workload. Across Africa, Asia, Latin America and yes, even Europe, Australia, and North America there are millions of those who for ten hours a day for wages of less than a dollar a day! There’s a reason we call them the Proletariat- the working class! It’s because they’re the ones doing all the actual work. They do the farming, the mining, the sweeping, the building, the cleaning, the producing and manufacturing! Why on earth would we even dare to consider these people to be lazy?

Because we’re lazy.

As I’ve said, humans are lazy. More often than not we don’t take the time and effort to investigate something for ourselves; we simply make assumptions or believe whatever our leaders and the media feed us. Since the poor are poor and unable to afford decent (if any) healthcare, we immediately assume that the poor are simply dirty. Since the poor can’t afford decent (if any) educations, we immediately assume that the poor are ignorant and stupid. Since the poor are poor and can’t always afford food/medicine/etc., many are forced into lives of crime- we immediately assume that the poor are naturally criminal. But laziness isn’t the only reason we don’t ask why the poor live in poverty.

Humans are also naturally arrogant. The idea- no, the myth- that the poor are poor because they are lazy makes us feel better about ourselves. We’re where we are because of our efforts! We’re wealthy because of our intelligence, our skill! We’re where we are because of our work-ethic, our self-discipline, and our decency!

Egotistical lies.

We’re where we are because of our own efforts and the efforts of our parents and their parents before them and because of the state of the world we live in and the class we were born into. Personal effort makes up about ten percent of it- the rest is accident of birth and dumb luck. A person pulling himself to the top from nothing is such a rare event that we make a major Hollywood film out of it. If you’re born poor, chances are you’ll stay poor no matter how hard you get unless you get not one but a whole chain of lucky breaks. If you’re born into a middle-class family, you’re probably going to stay middle-class unless you get a bunch of lucky breaks (though less than if you were poor). If you’re born into wealth and privilege than you haven’t done anything to deserve your life and don’t have to do anything to maintain it. Like I said, it really comes down to accident of birth. If you’re lucky, you’re wealthy, if you’re not, you’re poor and probably will be poor for the rest of your life. The Caste System isn’t exclusive to Hinduism.

So in short, don’t believe in the fairy-tale that the wealthy are the best of society and the poor are the worst, or that the poor are poor only because of their own efforts. We are, for the most part, fixed in our place by statistical chance- individual effort has very little effect on us.

It isn’t fair, is it? Only a sadist or an idiot could honestly state that this is an ethical system. Most of us simply shrug our shoulders and say that “life isn’t fair” or “that’s just the way things are…”. I say that when someone’s been murdered, we can’t stick our hands in our pockets and say “life isn’t fair”. I say that when any injustice has been committed, no matter on what scale, the only ethical course of action is to establish justice. Yes, life isn’t fair- but maybe that’s because no one’s doing anything about it!

Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the Americas Watch got nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize!

Who Father Roy is…
What the SOAW is…

I’ve participated in the SOAW yearly rally twice and I believe very strongly in this cause. I am thrilled to hear about this nomination.

After the end of WWI, and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire, a new state called Czechoslovakia was formed in 1918, consisting of the regions of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Slovakia, and Carpathian Ruthenia. Many different ethnicities resided within this newly formed country, including Germans, Slovaks, Hungarians, and Ruthenians, living alongside the majority Czech population.

In the western-most region of the country, in the provinces of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia, there lived a majority German-speaking population, many of whom had been former subjects of the Kaiser before the fall of the Second Reich. This region was known in German and English speaking countries as Sudetenland, named for the Sudeten mountain range that ran thru Silesia along the Polish border.

At the end of WWI, these Sudeten Germans, known as Sudetendeutsche, pushed hard for unification with Austria, in the ultimate hopes of being incorporated into Weimar Germany. The Czechs, however, pushed US President Woodrow Wilson equally hard for the annexation of Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia. Wilson responded by sending an ambassador to the region to access the situation. At this time in European history, oppression of ethnic and religious minorities was common, and the situation was no different in a figurative melting pot like Czechoslovakia. After witnessing a violent crackdown on Sudeten German protesters by the Czech authorities, Wilson’s ambassador suggested that most of Sudetenland would be better off under German or Austrian rule, but his suggestion was ignored. Those observing the situation knew that Sudetenland would one day become a problem in the future, either for the Czechs at the hands of Germany, or for the Sudeten Germans at the hands of Czechoslovakia, but given the region’s ample resources, and massive industry, which the Czechoslovak State would come to depend on, the Prague government insisted that Czechoslovakia could not survive without it.

During the years after the end of WWI, the Czechoslovak government undertook a massive program of fortifying the Sudetenland along their border with Germany, in fear of invasion. Many of these fortifications were nestled into the Sudeten mountains, and were thought by most military analysts at the time to be even more formidable than the infamous Maginot Line in France. Naturally assuming that any German invasion would have to come thru Sudetenland, the Czechoslovak government didn’t spend nearly as much time, money, or resources fortifying the rest of the country, although there were a similar, though less formidable set of defenses along the Hungarian border as well.

When the Great Depression devastated the worldwide economy in the 1930’s, Sudetenland was hit particularly hard by the downturn, as most all of Czechoslovakia’s industry was located there; armaments, textiles, glassworks, etc… Many ethnic Germans lost there jobs when the factories were forced to lay off workers, and a majority of them blamed the Czech government for their problems. Given their newfound hardships, they became all the more susceptible to communist and socialist messages. Marxist and Fascist parties gained popularity amongst the Sudeten Germans and many Pan-German organizations were formed. One party in particular, called the Sudetendeutsche Party (SdP), an ultra-nationalist/separatist group led by Konrad Henlein (ironically an anti-Nazi until the pro-Nazi element within Czechoslovakia attained power), gained a rather large following amongst Sudeten Germans, after aggressively agitating for union with Nazi Germany and making impossible demands that the Czechoslovak government couldn’t possibly accept. His philosophy was summed up by the following statement; “We must make demands that cannot be satisfied”. Adopting the Nazi phrase “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (one people, one empire, one leader) as his own, Henlein’s SdP attained a majority vote in Sudetenland by the late ’30s, and was behind a number of terrorist attacks and coup attempts against the Czechoslovak government. These attacks failed and Henlein was forced to flee to Nazi Germany in 1938, where he then became a guerilla leader and launched covert attacks on Czechoslovakia from the north. He was instrumental in influencing Hitler’s enthusiasm in regards to the Sudeten Crisis and also played a major role in shaping the Munich Agreement. 

On Sept. 30th, 1938, Hitler signed the Munich Agreement, or Munich Pact, with a number of other signatories, including British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and Fascist Italian leader, Benito Mussolini. After making numerous threats against Czechoslovakia, demanding the handover of the Sudetenland, the major European powers, England, France, and Italy, moved quickly to appease Hitler, as they had done only months earlier when Austria was annexed to the Third Reich in “Anschluss” (meaning link-up). A conference was held in Munich, as the title Munich Agreement would imply, in which the fate of Czechoslovakia was to be determined, yet Czechoslovakia had no say in the matter. Their ambassadors were barred from the conference altogether, at the behest of Hitler, and were forced to sit by quietly as their country was mutilated by Nazi daggers wielded by the very countries (i.e. Britain and France) who had guaranteed to protect Czechoslovakia from the very actions their own statesmen were undertaking. With a stroke of the pen, and a friendly handshake with der Führer, Neville Chamberlain and Édouard Daladier signed over virtually all of the Czechoslovak defenses and industry to Nazi Germany. In addition to the formidable mountain fortifications, which Hitler personally inspected after the pact was made, the famous Škoda Works armaments plant, which was responsible for the production of most all of Czechoslovakia’s armaments, was ceded to the Nazis as well. In fact, the Škoda Works was responsible for the production of the LT-35 and LT-38 tanks, more commonly known by the German name Panzer 35(t) and the Panzer 38(t), which were originally Czech creations. Both models would ultimately serve as the foundation in the invasions of both Poland and France. 

After the Munich Agreement had been signed, Czechoslovakia lost all faith in the West, and would not forgive the governments of Britain and France for their backstabbing until many years later. Oddly enough, Hitler was just as angry. He reportedly loathed the diplomatic dealings of Chamberlain and felt he had been made to act like a democratic bourgeois, threatening that “If that silly old man (Chamberlain) comes interfering here again with his umbrella, I’ll kick him downstairs and jump on his stomach in front of the photographers”. Fearing war might result if nothing could be agreed upon, the British population received the pact favorably and felt they had dodged the bullet, literally and figuratively. In what has become one of the most infamous moments in history, Chamberlain returned to London waving around Hitler’s signature in his hand, exclaiming that he had delivered “peace for our time”… which, in retrospect he most obviously did not. The French ambassador to the conference, Édouard Daladier, however, sensed that the worst of it was yet to come, stating that he believed Hitler’s aim was, “domination of the Continent in comparison with which the likes of Napoleon were feeble”. Unfortunately, as fate would have it, Daladier was right and Chamberlain was wrong. 

By signing the Munich Agreement, Britain and France neutered Czechoslovakia by handing their most formidable defenses to Hitler. This laid the groundwork for the total annexation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi forces, which would take place the following year when the Wehrmacht entered Prague. In addition to this, virtually all of Czechoslovakia’s industries, including the Škoda Works, were made part of Hitler’s war machine, and many of the Panzers that came off of the Škoda production lines were responsible for the deaths of Allied soldiers, in addition to the capture of Paris and Warsaw. Without a doubt, the Munich Agreement set the Allies back for years in terms of their struggle with Hitler. The pact strengthened Hitler’s hand, and weakened the Allies all in one fell swoop. While the goal of “peace in our time” was a noble one, Chamberlain’s dreams of a pacifist Europe were not met by reality. Hitler was very clearly on the warpath and had Britain and France recognized that before it was too late, and had they actually lived up to the obligations they made with countries like Czechoslovakia, Hitler’s war machine may have been stopped years sooner than it was, and millions of lives would’ve been spared. The Škoda Works alone were responsible for untold carnage within the Allied ranks… the same Škoda Works that had belonged to the Allies prior to 1938.

Racism really isn’t as complex of an issue as it is made out to be. Essentially, it’s the idea that certain groups of people are inherently less valuable than others. Now the roots of racism are complex- there’s the issues of ignorance, exposure, generalization, association, history, psychology and a myriad of other factors that go into creating this twisted idea.

Now we imagine that we’ve come a long way since the oppressive days of segregation, slavery, and colonization and perhaps, on some level, this is true. Bus seating is equal, there are no more separate water fountains, and a person can eat in a diner no matter what race he is. While there is still racism against minorities (especially against Arabs and Latinos these days), in general people are treated equally no matter what ethnicity they are.

What class they are is a different story completely.

Classism is the idea that certain groups have value depending on their social status- essentially this is racism (bigotry isn’t strong enough of a word) based not on the color of one’s skin but the size of one’s bank account. While this has several causes, one of the greatest is the idea that people’s social status is proportionate to their intelligence, creativity, and efforts. If this were true (and it isn’t), it would mean that the rich are wealthy because they worked their way to the top and the poor and hunger and filthy because they are lazy. This lie is only reinforced by the fact that crime is higher among lower classes than among the wealthy- one might imagine that the poor are poor because they are criminals, rather than poor are driven to crime because they are poor.

The ramifications of classism are many, the most apparent being the way the poor and working class are treated by the middle and upper classes. If you were walking along the street and saw a person running towards you (a person in a suit, carrying a briefcase, and wearing a Rolex watch) you’d probably stop and see what he wanted. Would you do the same thing if the person running at you was dressed in a ragged bathrobe and pushing a shopping cart? I doubt it. You see, it doesn’t matter who the man is or why he’s running at you, the simple appearance of wealth or poverty changes the way you relate to him. You assume the man in the suit is sane and decent and the man in the bathrobe isn’t (showing just how pervasive the idea is that ‘the wealthy are the best of society and the poor are the worst’). The way one dresses (the most obvious indication of class) affects one’s thoughts of, and actions toward, him. In addition, the fact that many minorities are members of the working and poor class tend to reinforce racism already present in society.

Of course when you look at the big picture, you can see how none of this makes sense- if a ship is sinks and down in the shark infested waters is a rich man, a middle-class man, and a poor man, should the rich man be saved first? Not at all. Once you strip away the cheap, material things by which we judge each other, we’re all human. The rich man is no more worth saving than the middle-class man, the middle-class man’s live is no less valuable than that of the poor man, yet despite this, we treat each other differently according to wealth. The rich have the best educations and the finest medical care, the working class has the worst.

The way I see it, equality isn’t the equal treatment of people in terms of race- equality is the equal treatment of people, no matter what.

Earlier this year, Taser International announced that they were offering a semi-automatic version of their popular party toy–the stun gun. This new version is capable of shooting up to three people without reloading the $30/shot taser cartridges. As this news was released in June, let me put some context around why this is relevant today.

Let’s say you’re in the airport awaiting a return to a state you have a love/hate relationship with (love the weather, abhor being unemployed). You receive a phone call from a friend/relative/stranger who will remain unidentified. After appropriate formalities, she (yes, my hypothetical girl is a girl) dovetails into the inevitable topic– legal advice.

“Um, I need you to draft a waiver for me.” She says, not as tentatively enough as she should have given the direction that this conversation continues.

“Okay….”

She launches into a story of a trip to the store with her boss the day before. A trip that culminated in the purchase of a taser and hundreds of dollars of accessories. Given the slight build of this hypothetical girl and her propensity to run in the dark in her hypothetical not-so-safe neighborhood, this seems like a relevant, although somewhat extreme, purchase. Oh no, my dear viewing public, this purchase was not for security and safety. This attempt at stimulating the economy was social experiment-cum-personal entertainment.

The waiver that she spoke of was to limit her liability for when she tases people. For fun. Whose fun, she was a bit more vague about. Once they had run out of “friends” willing to be tased for $50, they were going to move onto the larger pool of sadists and unemployeds who reside on Craigslist. She was giddy at the prospect of seeing how much money it would take for people to come and be tased, her newest barometer of economic stability and growth in the economy. Have to give her props for thinking outside of the box in terms of economic modeling, but also have to tell her emphatically to find another attorney. Which I did. Which she was not thrilled with, and is probably tasing people right now. But not as my client, she isn’t!

Which brings me to the moral of today’s story. In the days of economic upheavel and job uncertainty, it is important to remember that ethics and character are in short supply and high demand. Maintain your dignity, and don’t make money off of the loss of dignity of others. And spell check. Sermon over, now get back to job searching.

And when in doubt, go save turtles.

Money is wasted on the rich. ~ Hypothetical consultant I discussed this article with, quoting anonymous

« Ceux d’en bas, vers la mer, ne sont pas comme nous.
Ils ne sont pas d’ici. Nos pères les ont crus fous.
La mer, on s’en méfiait. A peine on y allait
Chercher le goémon qui nous servait d’engrais.
Nous autres, les Bretons, nous observions d’en haut
Ces bourgeois parisiens jouant les nobliaux. »

« Ceux d’en haut, ceux du bourg, ne sont pas comme nous.
Ils nous croient méprisants. Nous les croyons jaloux.
Il y a deux cents ans, notre aïeul eut l’idée
Sur le bord de la mer, jusque-là délaissé,
D’endiguer les bas-fonds, de drainer, de planter,
Pour léguer un domaine à sa postérité.

Par respect du milieu naturel, fallait-il
Le laisser en l’état, hostile et stérile?
Ou le mettre en valeur en un ample projet
Anticipant les lois promulguées bien après.
Qui l’a fait compte moins que le succès certain.
L’intérêt bien compris concourt au bien commun. »

Ceux d’en haut, ceux d’en bas sont certes différents.
Bien moins que l’étaient leurs arrière-grands-parents.
Pourquoi encore chercher qui a fait quoi à qui,
Jugeant autrefois aux critères d’aujourd’hui ?
Plutôt que ressasser les mêmes méfiances,
Pourquoi ne pas tenter de faire connaissance ?

Chacun chez soi bien sûr, vive la liberté !
Manants et châtelains sont mythes dépassés.
Paysans, employés se sont embourgeoisés.
Les bourgeois ont changé, ils sont moins empesés.
Le bourg, le littoral forment un seul ensemble.
Pourquoi donc faudrait-il qu’en tout ils se ressemblent?

Moralité.
Pile et face jamais ne se sont regardées.
Même contre leur gré, leur destin est lié.
La pièce ne vaut rien si une face est rognée.

I’m starting a blog about first world problems and bourgeois worries.

*Jakarta Globe, 4 November 2009

Jay is 19. He wants to be a monk. When we found mice floating in a bucket of water, the recycling manager asked us to dump them in the compost along with the decomposing heads of rotten lettuce, uneaten oatmeal and the remnants of last night’s dinner. But Jay couldn’t bear to deny the drowned rodents a proper burial. So we buried the mice, Jay and I, beside the compost heap, and held a moment of silence for their little souls.

After a week as a WWOOFer (Willing Workers on Organic Farms) at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Ranch, I no longer batted an eyelid at such incidents. By the time the first snow fell, I’d grown accustomed to the quirky residents of this upstate New York ashram, which blends yoga, meditation and permaculture (a ecological design system for sustainable living). After all, stumbling across eccentrics has always been the highlight of my travels. Such people see the world differently. The best of them can change history. The worst can’t even change themselves. It wasn’t until now that I questioned whether I truly welcomed these differences without prejudice.

Most of the ashram’s staff members are 20-something bourgeois men. Many find their way here for a dose of earthy escapism or spiritual guidance. Others, like Andy, treat the ashram as a rehabilitation center.

Andy comes from a nice Jewish family of lawyers from New York’s affluent Upper West Side. Following his graduation from a prestigious prep school filled with others like him, the lanky 20-year-old dedicated himself to smoking weed. Since he entered the ashram in September, Andy tells me, he hasn’t touched the illegal herb.

Following a desire to “get out of the box,” Andy chose an alternate lifestyle from his prep school (and now college-educated) peers. While they’re burying their heads in books at Columbia and NYU, Andy is spending his collegiate years as the ashram’s kitchen captain, washing the dishes.

Before the ground became blanketed by snow, I had spent a day digging a swale near the staff trailer with Andy’s roommate, Chris. A wretched youth with unkempt hair and bad teeth, he firmly believes that meditation during copulation is divine. He’s also sexually frustrated. He seemed mortally wounded when I suggested that most women aren’t eager to contemplate life while in coital alignment with a man. I refrained from further comment.

Rishikesh, a yogi and newcomer to the ashram like myself, pitched in with his opinion. “You should try the real world first before you come here,” he told Chris. It was advice Rishikesh took as well. After spending the last 30 years as a musician and yoga teacher in Los Angeles, he had hit hard times and resorted to strumming his guitar on cruise ships where suicidal Filipino deckhands would occasionally jump overboard. Finally, the New Jersey native decided to abandon all hope in his lost music career and headed east towards the ashram and possible salvation.

Chris took no notice of the yogi and was soon bemoaning his penniless state to anyone within hearing range. “Do you know where I can get some money?” he asked. But later, as he prepared to straggle forlornly toward the pantry for sustenance, I spotted poverty-stricken Chris gathering his $300 iPhone off a bale of hay.

As we watched him leave, Rishikesh shook his head. “Where can I get some money?” he said, imitating Chris. “Work!”

Being a yogi, it seems, didn’t make Rishikesh any less human. He couldn’t help looking upon the youngsters with a certain degree of disdain.

I swallowed my own contemptuous thoughts but agreed that living in an ashram to avoid college, a job or responsibilities can be hazardous to one’s future. I fear our companions will grow up indolent, ignorant and broke. But as I stood there and judged the residents of this ashram, I was forced to admit that my contempt for these youths may have stemmed from the similarities in our mutual desire to lead a different lifestyle.

I, too, hail from a bourgeois family. And throughout my life I’ve always strived to live “outside the box.” As a teen, I wanted to be a hermit, like Thoreau, and create my own Walden Pond. Maybe if there was an ashram nearby, I would’ve run toward it.

By questioning what these boys will amount to, I have become the very people who criticized my own decision to be different. This was my version of stumbling onto spirituality at the ashram — facing my own hypocrisy.

In the end, I realized there could be worse places for such young men to end up. Sivananda, on the other hand, offers a refuge for youths like Jay, Andy and Chris. Having singular views is not frowned upon here but embraced. At the ashram, outsiders are the insiders.

The purpose of my travels may have been to open my mind. But on this particular journey, I found instead just how narrow it can be.

Not amused: the scribbler.

Candid readers, it seems Ana Castillo, the learned subject of my Oct. 2 post, got wind of it and unwisely elected to counterpost, to the best of her limited abilities.  Below, therefore, I’ve cut and pasted the Oct. 9 blog entry from her website, verbatim, with one exception.  (I here elide the full name of the Berkeley grad student whose spelling/usage boner triggered my original post, a person whom Señorita Cosa gracelessly outs by name in her blog post — as my own post, you’ll recall, did not and still won’t.)

At the outset, let me note that Castillo includes, in her limp tissue of wet complaints, at least one bald-faced lie: that your faithful servant called the First Draqqueen a “gorilla” in a June 18, 2009 post.  Bullshit.  On the contrary, I used it to chastise those who do so call her, on the ground that Miss Hell Obomber doesn’t remotely resemble an ape, only a garden-variety, butt-ugly human being.  So get it straight, mentirosa.  Or did she just misread the post, as would be in keeping with her limited skill-set?  If so, I retract mentirosa and say she’s babosa.

My own reflections on Castillo’s devastating riposte follow.

———————————————————–
Friday, October 09, 2009

http://deanswift.wordpress.com/

This morning the world wakes to our the news that our president has been awarded the Nobel. But no doubt it has further fueled the ignorance the racism that has reared its very ugly head since his election in this country–just like the above link that went out yesterday about my reading last night.

By the way, it was extremely well attended.
And while I am not a size 42 (and nothing wrong with that) and don’t pump out books like the white privileged mystery writer she referred me I personally took no offense.
Anyone who calls Sara Palin ‘divine’ is in some serious need of soul saving.
It is true that people come to listen to my reading but what this hateful ’student’ can’t appreciate (but probably would understand if her hero Sara Palin came to Berkeley) is that my long time readers also come to SEE me.
Reading further on this white reactionary blog–she has referred to the first lady as a ‘gorilla’ and to those who must obviously be objecting to this hateful nonsense as ‘anti-white’? Whatever happened to Berkeley?
I’ll have to say it recalled the last time I was on this campus–as a Regent’s lecturer. As I began my reading at the Latina conference ’somene’ set off the fire alarm. the building was evacuated immediately, fire department called, program over–I went off to have Chinese food with friends. I asked Rosa M——z–the target of the hateful blog entry yesterday to read it beforei introducing me at the program. There are two emotions that motivate the human spirit, I told them afterward. One is love (the reason I have been invited, the students who helped to organized, the professors who teach my books and the community people who came out) and fear–the blog entry.

—————————————————

[October 23, 2009]

My, what a deft close reader Castillo is!  She sloppily infers that your faithful servant is herself a grad student, and at Berkeley, inter alia, because Sweet Thang, my source, is.  (Sorry to embarrass you, baby — I know you’ve gone all monkish on our collective ass the last year or two, but remember, there were times when you used to spoil me ROTTEN.  You know you did.)

As if I’d be caught dead in either the profession or the place.  Baby, when you write you need to get paid for it.  And living anywhere but Silver Lake (with the possible exception of Williamsburg, as I remember it anyway) sounds to me like hideous exile in the sticks.  I won’t even cross the line into Los Feliz, kids — that shit’s bourgeois.

And let’s not even start on Castillo’s syntax and usage boners — I guess your faithful servant was on to something after all, huh, mean old bitch that I am, as you Beaming Betty Crockers out there are forever complaining.  (Can’t a girl be tough and respected?  Spare me your sugary, femmy, nurturing, first-wave feminist kitsch, ladies of the Left.)  And, holy cow, her smug, insecure, posturing screed of a post’s just rotten with typos — if I dared hand my editor a piece in this shape, let alone tried to post it as a finished article, she’d throw it back in my face.  And rightly so.

Poor dumb creature — Castillo earnestly volunteers, with more rhetoric than sense, that “there are two emotions that motivate the human spirit,” love and fear.  Er, I submit she’s forgetting the third, much more interesting one: amusement, which very vitally motivates my blog entry.  My own amusement, that is — I don’t claim it’s objectively witty, just subjectively, and gives me the relief of shouting, or at least bitching, when confronted with yet another instance of fools swindled by knaves, a capsule formula for the university literature departments these days.

And I assure you, I continue to be amused, rather than angered, by this scribbling ideologue: Could Castillo’s wrapping herself in the flag of Obama bin Laden and his dragqueen spouse be ANY more cloying and fatuous?  I almost puked at her servile, abject “our president” — what’s with this hushed tone of reverence?  Lick boots much, chica?  And how about her frantic, fawning haste to point out “Look, look, I’m important, I was a Regent’s Lecturer at Berkeley!” (long since a hollow credential, alas, after literature in the mainline universities was defined down to include the pulp fiction of agitproppers like Castillo).

There, there, don’t cry — have a nice cup of Insecuri-Tea, dear, you’ll feel better.  And maybe just a bit of cheese with your whine?  Gross!  It’s unseemly — she’s like a needy puppy, yapping and whining as it runs back and forth to trip you in the hall, peeing on itself and your shoes in eagerness to be validated.

Above: A portentous littérateur reads, to an adoring claque of spectators, at Berkeley.

And how ’bout that pompous, overblown mandarinism?  (Pretty sad day for the mandarinate, if this mis-speller and sentence-fragmenter’s what they’re reduced to revering.)  Castillo and the quasi-literates who buy her printed effluvia exhibit a suffocating, lifeless deference to social authority and received opinions that would make Alfred Lord Tennyson and Queen Victoria blush for shame.  “My books are taught in the universities!”  (Cut to extreme close-up of celestial mandarin strolling through Hall of Mirrors, making heavy-lidded, purse-lipped faces to the glass, huelepedos nose held skyward in paroxysm of smarm.)  Oh, madam, I do apologize — please, your ladyship, say no more, we’re all terribly impressed out here in the trenches, where literature, if it’s to be made at all, will actually get made.

Actually, if she wants to read what might very well, after a few decades of cool judgment intervene first, be judged literature, by a first-tier intellect and first-tier stylist who happens to be Mexican-American but isn’t, mercifully, far gone in terminal self-adoration, or a bought-and-paid-for political hack, Castillo has much, much to learn from the deft Richard Rodriguez, especially his essay collection Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father (best on style points) and Brown: The Last Discovery of America (best on substance).

Actual talent: Richard Rodriguez.

But, horrors!  To admit the greater merits of another writer like Rodriguez, whose writing, both as form and substance, soars out of the abysm of self-reference in which Castillo’s screeds are sunk, would be to move beyond squalling self-absorption, to grow a pair and quit blaming “society” for the fact that you can’t write, and that nobody but the closed circle of the professionally aggrieved, and the repressed white ladies in the English departments who enjoy missionarying and condescending to them, wants to read your prose.  If it’s only because Castillo’s a “minority” (and she’s sure as shit not a minority here in majority-Mexican L.A.), or if it’s only because “society” is holding her down, that she can’t write her way out of a wet paper sack, then how do we explain Rodriguez?

For Rodriguez’ writing transcends, rather than wallows in, the disadvantages he was born into.  In his marvelously complex life, the past isn’t disavowed, or lost — but neither is it sentimentalized, nourished, fostered, in a perennial bile of resentments, grievances, and unforgiven wrongs (Lucifer, anybody?) in the belly you croon to, day in, day out, that’s long since risen up your gorge and into your head and yellowed even your eyes, so that for decades you haven’t seen anything, anything at all, even the stars or the flowers, except through the jaundiced prism of your hatreds.

No, in Rodriguez that past is instead neutralized, sweetened, absorbed, turned into something rich and strange that no one’s quite sure of yet (but we’re sure that we like it, ’cause it’s stylish).  The narrative arc he began in Hunger of Memory, a mesmerizing account of how Rodriguez, like all of us who manage to write prose people not part of our clique care about, achieved escape velocity from private language and rocketed into public speech and citizenship, is still curving upward (let’s hope there’s a book-length sequel to Brown).  Rodriguez like all Americans worthy of the name is a self-fashioner where Castillo is a self-pitier; he long ago left the dank, close air of Berkeley, in whose English Department he did his grad work — apparently without ever writing an e-mail to colleagues beginning “you might of heard…” — for the bracing air of the city.  Was it inborn talent, or lots and lots of hard work?  Both?

Either way, Castillo’s camp of critical race theorists and moldy Marxists, forever blaming bad character on social and economic conditions — as if poor people were so poor they can’t pick up their yards — will live and die petulantly refusing to accept any explanation for inequalities of outcome that doesn’t always, suspiciously, circle back to mean, old, rich, male whitey.  (What pity I’m none of the above — well, okay, maybe I’m a little mean, just around the edges).  ‘Cause that might require these professional resenters, if only imaginatively, to exit the warm, solipsist womb of the university hall of mirrors, and this, we can infer, the comfortable charity-case scribblers, cozily cocooned in praise from the Lilliputians of the lit departments, will never bestir themselves to do.

Rodriguez, you see, was exposed to, and then eagerly immersed himself in, writers of times, places and situations other than his own — Gawd, he even read Protestant theology at Columbia — those crazy nuns, you see, trusted him to learn and generalize beyond his own parochial experience.  And now it’s paid big dividends in his subtly-toned, allusive, impersonal prose, and in a smart, well-balanced cultural criticism which may before long stand comparison with Carlyle’s and Arnold’s — because Rodriguez long ago disdained and bypassed the horrible self-ghettoization of “ethnic studies,” championed by soft-bigotry-of-low-expecations types like Castillo and her enablers in the lit departments.

Rodriguez’ great master Arnold: they share the long, bony, handsome head.

Speaking of which, shouldn’t having her deathless fictions put on a university lit syllabus be the kiss of death for little Miss Piss-on-the-Canon, in whose dim, dim horizon of expectations the horrid Barbara Cartland probably does loom as some “white privileged mystery writer,” a veritable mass-market Patricia Highsmith?  But don’t expect logical consistency or rhetorical coherence from this shameless self-promoter — Castillo’s blog post is far too busy tripping over itself in her haste to run and hide behind the skirts of (secular) Respectability, Piety and Orthodoxy, rushing to shut down any debate that might unsettle her and her claque’s easy, shallow certainties — and I’m reactionary?  Oh, this is too good!

Who’s the pious old fraud trying to convince, anyway?  I don’t think it’s really me, or you, candid reader — more like herself and the cowed claque of coffee shop radicals, parochial hippies and ugly introvert fat girls who turn out for her “readings.”  How exactly should I fear Castillo when she can’t even close-read another girl’s blog post, let alone a literary text?  Or excise the typos, solecisms and just plain infelicities from her own?  First cast out the beam from your own eye, hocicona, and then you’ll see clearly how to pull the mote outta mine.

Oh, and by the way: It’s not me but you, dear, who need some “soul-saving” — tsk, tsk, sounds rather Christian and reactionary of you, and don’t lefties pretend all human behavior’s caused by material condtions? — about Sarah Palin.  (Note the “h,” dim bulb — I only used the Italian spelling locally to cohere with “la divina.”  And must we hilariously infer that you took the epithet literally?  Oh dear; the dullness is just too painful.)  For as everyone on the right knows, and as all of you on the left dread, Sarah Palin has the body of a goddess (not the blood-drinking pre-Columbian ones you posture to revere, dear), and the raw energy and crowd appeal of a rock star, and she’s going to be the next President of the United States.

But then, you were probably just exercised ’cause you couldn’t construe my Latin about her.  That’s pretty embarrassing, no?  Shouldn’t a Latina be Latinaloquens?

Je ne sais pas vous, mais à l’approche de l’hiver on voit apparaître un phénomène qui personnellement me perturbe : le syndrome du “je ne suis pas bronzée alors je me maquille comme une voiture volée”! On a tous eu une copine ayant une légère tendance au surplus de fond de teint, à la démarcation orange dans le cou ou encore à la grosse trace maronnasse sur le col roulé beige. Et bien moi je dis NON!

“Je vise le naturel, détruis l’artificiel; ce point du vue heu, reste personnel”, non ce n’est pas de moi mais d’Alliance Ethnik (oui je sais que ça date lol). Tout ça pour vous dire que pour cet hiver, je dis halte à la couche épaisse de maquillage qui assèche la peau et donne des rides avant l’heure.

Bourgeois a bien compris cette tendance et lance sa nouvelle gamme UNE.

Crédit Photo : http://www.unebeauty.com/

Crédit Photo : http://www.unebeauty.com/

UNE de Bourgeois nous propose donc une gamme de produits de maquillage “nude”. La gamme se compose de Fonds de teint poudre ou crème, de crayons khôl, de mascaras, de fards à paupières, de rouges à lèvres…soit au total 19 produits déclinés en plus de 120 teintes pour s’adapter au plus grand nombre. Difficile de ne pas trouver chaussure à son pied (ou plutôt mascara à ses cils ) dans cette large gamme de produits.

Vous n’êtes pas une pro du maquillage? No stress, les textures sont ultra faciles à poser et à travailler au doigt. Pas besoin d’investir dans du matériel de pro, tout peut se poser au doigt.

Le naturel de la gamme UNE ne s’arrête pas aux coloris choisis. La gamme a une démarche écologique avec des ingrédients naturels (entre 98 et 100% des composants). Les produits proviennent de l’agriculture biologique, sans colorants artificiels ni parabène, ni silicone ce qui protège la peau en la respectant et en la laissant “respirer”. Les packagings sont quant à eux conçus pour minimiser l’impact sur l’environnement.

En résumé, les produits sont bios – ils respectent la planète et sont naturels.

Pour ma part je vais me précipiter de les essayer et je sens que je vais les adopter!

Points de vente : Galeries Lafayette, Printemps, Nocibé (en magasin et en ligne www.nocibe.fr), Natural beauty et au Monoprix.

Crédit Photo : http://www.unebeauty.com/

Hola a todas y todos!

Como va ese finde? Palpitando el día de la madre? No vamos a ponernos aqui a discutir sobre la fuerza de ese día, si es comercial o no, si hay que comprar regalitos o no, pero bueno lo importante es superar esa discusión y simplificar.

Ya tienen el regalo para su madre?? Porque si no saben que regalarle y quieren hacer un regalo muy especial, donde su mamá va a pasar un momento increíble, llenándose los ojos de cosas lindas y las papilas gustativas de sabores súper delicados llámennos al 4804-3421 y comprenle una entrada para el Six! Puede ser un súper regalo, muy original y sus madres lo van a pasar divino!

Espero sus llamados

Buen fin de semana.

Les dejo una imagen de la gran artista plástica Louise Bourgeois, que refleja la conflictividad del vínculo madre-hija. A nuestras mamás las queremos, pero no siempre es fácil no?

So I told my mom last night, “How are you a Democrat? You vote Democrat but you talk to me every week on the phone like a Conservative. You raised me as a Conservative by instilling in me very Conservative values. You are a Conservative, you just don’t know it.”

She laughed.

Admittedly, this is something that has long since bothered – well maybe it doesn’t bother me, it more-or-less intrigues me. How can one vote for something all their lives but on a very personal level, they are very much something else? My mother is a wonderful person. I am very much like her and this is probably due to her strong desire to raise me with all she had. She was very active in my life, maybe a little bit too much sometimes if you know what I mean. But she is a Liberal and I am a Conservative…

She is fiscally conservative. I don’t know if she is that way because she has to be or because that is who she is. We never had money growing up. The magic answer to anything new was normally “no.” After a while I didn’t even bother to ask. I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to her to deny my request, but because I understood that the family could not afford it. I don’t remember her ever specifically saying this fact, but I do remember her diligently cutting out coupons and searching for sales. I remember getting cheap shoes and hoping they lasted, but I never knew there was a difference in shoes until other kids pointed it out to me. We never went out on the town – and if it was, it was to Taco Bell off the 69 cent menu (which was a real treat). Maybe she did, but I never heard her begging for help from people either – she just went out and worked multiple jobs. Or even better, worked one job while we were at school that way she could be with us kids at home.

She believes in personal responsibility. I remember my Mother and Father sitting me down one day and telling me, “If you do something wrong, we are going to let you pay the consequences. Even if that means jail. However, if you did nothing wrong, then we will stand by you until the end.” I tested both ends of that spectrum growing up. On the negative end I decided to go out with some friends and tear someone’s bushes up by jumping on them. The neighbor called my parents and my parent’s delivered me to the owner of the bush to do whatever he wanted. Luckily for me, he was a friend of the family and he just had me apologize and clean up the mess. The other boys that tore the bush up with me, their parents were called but they never came to help or even to apologize. Maybe this is another instance where I learned that I was being raised in a special way. On the other end of that spectrum I was blamed for tearing up a school textbook on the school bus one day. They stood up for me even though the school was ready to suspend me.

She believed in competition. She always was pitting myself against my siblings in athletics and school – especially school. I remember her saying, “If you don’t keep your grades up, your brother’s and sisters are going to and then get good jobs and then they aren’t going to help you. ” It was obvious that she believed in excelling in whatever task you did to “get ahead of the competition.” It was never, nah, sit back and coast and someone will help you out or bail you out, it was always “if you don’t do it, then nobody’s going to do it for you.” It was never mean. In fact, it was kind of fun to compete.  My all-star/select siblings in multiple sports always beat me in sports but I had them in academics. But they never gave up chasing my grades and I never quit chasing their sports records.

She was an individualist. It was obvious that she loved all of us but it was also obvious that she loved each of us on an individual level and most definitely not out of obligation. I remember camping and all of us were a team to set up camp and each had their own little jobs. Sometimes, the job was to just stay out of the way because you were cranky with a full diaper. Ha! But same back home. We were recognized on our own merits. I don’t think I realized it at all at the time, but I see it now. I never heard any sort of bigoted comment. If she was mad, then it was at that person, not their race or their gender or anything.

I remember little things that my mother said to me growing up all the time and I always wonder, how can a fairly dedicated Democrat say something that is so utterly Conservative in thought? I wish I could remember them so I could post them right now because some of them had a very large impact on me being who I am today.

I ended up telling her a little later in the conversation that I think she is simply a Democrat because that is what has been taught to her. For whatever reason in the past people were generally taught that Democrats are “for the people/workers” and that Republicans are “for businesses/businessmen.” Since she has always been a worker, she has also maintained that thought. Her parents (my grandparents) are also Democrats, so it seems that political affiliations run in the family (although I’d argue that my grandparents are Conservative too).

With that said, it seems that in some of the mid-generations the pseudo Communistic bourgeois (R) vs proletariat (D) is there. I wonder how many people of older generations as well as the new voters have really taken a look at both parties and realized that in reality, they are the same with very small differences – both still war (to go or to continue funding), both are still fiscally irresponsible, both take rights/liberties away, both don’t represent their constituents, and both vote on things/laws that are unConstitutional.

So how is it that a Conservative thinker was raised by a Democratic mother again? Where is the disconnect?

the game.

Rules:
1. Players make rude comments above the heads of those sitting around the dinner table.
2. When rude comments are acknowledged by other guests, players will continue game in rapid, tasteless pretense-off.
3. Players are eliminated after comments cause their expulsion from the table in a blustery affair of accusations and crude judgments by wife, other guests, and/or the host/hostess.

1-8 players. Ages 6 and up. Great gift for bourgeois types and adults who take themselves very seriously.

As if giving time to golpista dictators or Charles fucking Krauthammer wasn’t enough – the Washington Post is talking about Venezuela (excuse me, Hugo Chávez) again. As a former resident of the Washington area (Manassas, if you must know), the WaPo has seriously declined in readability over the last decade.

Today’s story is no exception. It’s not a discussion on investigations of US companies or the state re-subsidizing food markets or Human Development Rankings. All news stories (among many others) broke just this week. Instead…

The Washington Post wishes to talk about golf. Chávez called golf ‘bourgeois’ (as if he erred in judgment, as if that isn’t true!). Chavez asked on Alo Presidente:

“Can someone tell me, ‘Is this a sport of the people?’”

“Noooooo,” government ministers and other officials in the audience dutifully replied.

“It is not,” Chávez concluded.

And so the shit storm begins. The state department weighs in. The wealthy and well-off of Caracas weigh in. Chávez is in the end, misinformed. Fidel and Che used to play after the revolution in their military fatigues, they say. “There’s even evidence that Che Guevara was a good golfer,” [said Julio Torres, director of the Venezuelan Golf Federation], “from back in his days in Argentina.”

Chávez correctly points out the blights of decaying neighborhoods surrounded by the oases of golf courses – a sport, shall we mention, is booming. The booms that the Post speaks of (such as 500,000 golfers in China today – “a state that Chavez reveres”) have come at a huge price on its many impoverished people.

Golf courses tear up vegetation and natural lands, displacing animals and destroying local ecology. Then they import sand, exotic trees, etc. But it is the cost of maintenance alone that is astronomical on the community. Not only will the course usually take from the public coffers – taking water from residents who truly need it, or poisoning it first with pesticides and herbicides.

In the US alone, golf courses bring in more than $50 billion dollars a year. This kind of money, flowing upwards in Venezuela and other tourist areas, will only cause more problems.

Opening up golf courses, which in the US used to be the most racially stratified sport, means nothing if one cannot afford to buy or rent clubs, shoes, adopt the dress codes and set aside hours a day when you have to work to survive.

Besides:

Chávez and other government officials have said golf courses could be better used as housing for the poor or as public parks. In Caracas, clogged with traffic and marked by slums and old apartment blocks, there are few who would deny the need for more green space.

And if Chávez doesn’t convince you, let George Carlin do all the work:

Those folks who talk about relating to the struggle of others whom they have never met, let alone hung out with, seem to need a haven of acceptance among those they consider less fortunate than themselves.

Perhaps this is some guilt alleviating mechanism for over indulgence.

Or maybe it is an exercise to activate gratitude for having so much.

Or perhaps they have no reason to be creative so they are relegated to observation (and even imitation) of those who are forced to create.

I can’t know.

Slumming it, has some kind of attraction to folks who know they can go home when they are done participating in an uncomfortable environment from which others may not have the option to escape.

Historically, many of the most creative people among us have lived in conditions which forced them to be resourceful and creative.

Jazz musicians, artists, poets, and most recently, urban hip hop artists,

have used their internal creativity to communicate harsh external realities in their surroundings.

Perhaps, like Plato said “…the true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.”

Creativity does seem to rise out of necessity or struggle.

Does that mean that those who have no obvious struggles are incapable of creativity?

Again, I can’t know.

But there seems to be a social need to struggle to justify one’s existence.

We do all manner of things to prove we can struggle.

We invent trials for ourselves, mountains to climb, conflicts to resolve.

We challenge ourselves to conquer adversity—even if we have to invent the adversity.

Evidently, struggling has value in defining our selves.

Romantic notions about struggling artists, or those rising above deemed unfavorable stations, generates something within us that wants to relate.

Struggling is heroic.

It is ironic that those who struggle try to become one of the non struggling.

The struggling dream of winning the lottery or getting rich so they can be one of the folks who don’t have to be creative anymore.

The Proletariat wishes to be included in the Bourgeois.

While the Bourgeois seem to be thrilled to be included in the Proletariat’s inspiration to create.

Image: From a previous Post

]]> http://deanswift.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/sarahs-memoir-already-number-one-on-amazon-and-barnes-and-noble/ Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:13:37 +0000 Gerrie Attrick http://deanswift.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/sarahs-memoir-already-number-one-on-amazon-and-barnes-and-noble/

Miranda, amanda – and dux femina facti, you damn betcha.

It will surprise none of you, candid readers, that la divina Sara’s new memoir Going Rogue: An American Life, with six weeks to go before release date, has already rocketed to number one on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Yes, Governor Palin, that most potent mixture of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Magna Mater and Britomart, to name just a few of her coruscating personae, is a rock star, who leaves bourgeoise hags like Miss Hell Obomber and lumpen lesbians like Hillary Clinton in the dust.  She’s a scintillating ball of energy and blooming good health — in addition to being a blend of William Jennings Bryan and Robert Alphonso Taft, of blessed Old America memory — and she could draw 50,000 people to the opening of a hardware store, on an hour’s notice.

Beat that, Barack Hussein Ogabe, you gangling, crack-smoking pimp.  But then, I guess there are no chapters in Alinsky for dealing with forces of nature.  The affirmative-action incompetent in the White House and his loathsome Chicago handlers are way out of their depth dealing with Palin, as we saw last fall when her mesmerizing speech at the Republican National Convention sent Ogabe’s Potemkin village campaign into a tailspin (rescued, just in the nick of time, by the spectacular collapse of the Federal Reserve’s stock-jobbing house of cards).

Herewith, therefore, a link to SarahPAC, where you can donate a few Yankee dollars to our first female President’s political action committee, as I did this afternoon — yes, my widow’s mite goes to Sarah, and cheerfully done:

http://sarahpac.com/

I trust Gov. Palin will continue to be the focus of support not only for us Constitutionalists, populists, paleoconservatives, libertarians, and values voters, but also for all you Republicans of good will out there who think McCain, Grahamnesty and Lamar Alexander (the last two voted to confirm Red Sonia Sotomayor) and the rest of those country-club Viagravators should get bent.

Grahamnesty : Does the depilated old queen imagine that thin, tight rictus passes for a smile? And that porcine nose, as though he were constantly scenting his own sulphurous fart.  Would that Mencken were living at this day, to satirize this high prole come up in the world, or better yet Catullus, with his Celtiberian nouveaux riches proudly showing their teeth on the slightest pretext, freshly brushed with Spanish piss.

Speaking of country clubs, the principle-free zone that is Mitt “Stop Me if You’ve Heard Me Deny the Divinity of Christ Before” Romney, and the rest of the Grand Old Plutocrats, better be nice to Sarah. Remember the last banker with a personality bypass who crossed us and thought he could still be president? The one defeated by Perot and succeeded by Clinton?

Camarade bourgeois,
camarade fils-à-papa,
la Triumph en bas d’chez toi,
le p’tit chèque en fin de mois,
regarde-toi ah ah ah
regarde-toi ah ah ah

Camarade bourgeois,
camarade fils-à-papa,
t’as vraiment pas l’air con,
quand tu sors le dimanche
ton petit complet-veston
et ta chemise blanche.
regarde-toi ah ah ah
regarde-toi ah ah ah

Camarade bourgeois,
camarade fils-à-papa,
tu roules en Ferrari
ou en Lamborghini,
tu roules des épaules,
tu te crois super-drôle,
regarde-toi ah ah ah
regarde-toi ah ah ah

Camarade bourgeois,
camarade fils-à-papa,
je sais, ton père est patron,
faut pas en faire un complexe,
le jour d’la révolution,
on lui coupera qu’la tête.
regarde-toi ah ah ah
regarde-toi ah ah ah

Camarade bourgeois,
camarade fils-à-papa,
tu passes ton temps au drugstore
sur les Champs-Elysées
tu te crois très très fort,
t’es jamais qu’un minet.
regarde-toi ah ah ah
regarde-toi ah ah ah

Camarade bourgeois,
camarade fils-à-papa,
rejoins les rangs de la pègre,
tu prendras vraiment ton pied,
ne sois plus une petite pède,
nous sommes tous des défoncés,
regarde-moi ah ah ah
regarde-moi ah ah ah
regarde-moi ah ah ah
regarde-moi ah ah ah

© Tous droits réservés – 1975
Chanson issue de l’album “Amoureux de Paname”