Teresa --
Hope you're feeling better. I get migraines a lot and find that the Imitrex one-shot inhalers work fastest for me. Have you tried them?
Terry -
Yours was the first post [or, actually, the first mention I've seen at all in any sort of media] about the way the US military and the US media shamelessly exploited the body of Hussein's son. I remember thinking when I was seeing that poor bastard's bloody photo all over the airwaves that it was a remarkably barbaric thing to do.
My brother, ever the staunch Bush-supporter since 9/11, explained that it was necessary to keep showing off the dead body so that the Iraqi people would know he was dead, to send a message "to those crazy people."
So in a way, I guess the Iraqi militants who paraded the bodies of those mercenaries around were doing the same thing, right? Sending a message to us crazy people here in the United States?
I understand killing your enemy in battle is sometimes necessary. I really do. I don't understand the need to take great pleasure in doing so, which is what it seems happened in both cases.
Either way, it's incredibly barbaric.
Am I happy there are paid mercenaries in Iraq? No. However, do I think a man deserves to die simply because he is paid $1000 to watch over a food convoy with a gun? Not really.
Xopher --
I don't think anyone [except Kathleen Parker] is being serious about nuking anyone. I read Epacris's statements as facetious. Er, at least I hope they were.
Mythago --
I agree, it doesn't matter what anyone's status in Iraq is when they are killed. They were still human beings who are still just as dead, and Dubbya is still ultimately the one responsible for putting them in harm's way in Iraq, whether directly or indirectly.
The anger and hatred of Americans I can certainly understand. The wanting Americans out of their country I can understand. I can even understand the killing of Americans.
But nobody deserves to have their bodies dragged around and mutilated and paraded to the media like carnival trophies.
Tom --
You're entitled to your opinion. There are, however, a awful lot of non-Republicans in the San Francisco Bay Area who are as frustrated and fed-up with the homeless situation as I am.
Tim --
Well, Phantom Menace was certainly a nightmare vision of something...
Tom --
Yes, I see misspelled Teresa's name once. However, I don't see how that makes every thing I've written suspect.
And no, not a Republican, never have been one. I'm a registered Independent and have been since about the early eighties. I mostly vote Democratic except in very local elections where I tend to vote Green.
Teresa --
I apologize for misspelling your name; it wasn't intentional. I am just a notoriously bad typist.
Mitch --
Well, I certainly don't consider you foolish, nor so I know you well enough to consider you what I would consider PC.
I'm assuming that the views you hold that you say are similar to those views held by some folks might think are PC are actually well-informed views, whereas what I think of when I think "PC" is the pack mentality thing, and that drives me crazy. [Sorry for the incredibly convoluted and run-on sentence.]
Most of the people that I know that use the term PC are in fact super-leftie-liberal-vegan-superheroes, and friends of mine from bookselling [an occupation that tends to draw a lot of politically active folk, I'm thinking].
The first time I ever heard that term was working in a bookstore, in a conversation with an extremely politically active socialist, who was using it to illustrate a point about some of his friends who were agreeing with him on points during an argument because they thought they were supposed to.
And that's exactly what it has always implied to me. I'm not sure I can make it any more clear than that.
Okay, everyone, go back over to whatever, cos John's got even MORE writing advice... and if possible, its even funnier than his previous writing advice.
Some of you might be interested in this story from my friend Kathleen & her partner Karen, who recently got married in San Francisco. Kathleen sent me a enormously long and very touching email about her experience, which I got permission to post on my blog. If you want to read it, her entry is here
Oh, and Mitch -
I think "Arab" is actually the new "commie."
Unfortunately.
I don't think PC means having views too liberal. Plenty of conservative Republicans are just as PC. Example: the whole brou-ha-ha over Janet Jackson's errant boob has suddenly made it PC to be anti-everything-to-do-with-sex-over-the-airwaves. You suddenly have broadcasters being hit with ridiculous fines by the FCC, Howard Stern being yanked off the air [yes, he's tasteless, but gee whiz, just change the station if you don't want to hear what he has to say] and a whole slew of people who are suddenlly outraged by indecency and what it is supposedly doing to our kids. If that isn't PC pack-mentality simplemindedness, I don't know what is.
I think PC means having views that are not your own, because the majority of whatevery group you align yourself with has those same views. It isn't conservative views that are under siege [and if they are, well, who cares?] but COMMON SENSE that seems to go out the window when pack mentality takes over.
I have an opinion about the death penalty because I actually do know quite a bit about it, and read about it whenever I get the chance. I read the pros, I read the cons. And I am still in favor of it for certain crimes, particularly for crimes having to do with children. And so far I have seen nothing that changes my mind on this.
In protesting my stance on the death penalty, you are making the assumption that I don't have an informed opinion. I do. It's simply a different opinion than your own. And it is just as valid as yours.
As for PC being derogatory, yes, well, hell yes, when I call someone PC, I mean it to be derogatory, just the same way as when I call someone a bonehead, I mean that to be derogatory. [And no, I am not calling YOU a bonehead.]
Yipes ! Typo! Like I don't use the preview function enough...
Tim, I meant Tim, not Tom. Sorry about that!
Christ, I need more coffee.
Tom --
My apologies; I didn't read your post clearly. For me, the term "politcially correct" has always meant something derogatory. To me, it describes a particular kind of mindset, the mindset of those people who would automatically protest your right to say something that does not hold with his or her [usually liberal] political views at the time. Coming from the Berkeley Area, you surely must have experienced this on more than one occasion.
I have heard other terms [one, "granola crunchies" that I kind of think is funny] but PC is the one that seems to fit the best for me. I consider myself liberal, and my voting record would hold up to that, but I certainly wouldn't consider myself PC. I wouldn't consider the majority of the people on this board to be PC either, to be honest.
And there are instances of perceived PC-ness that border on being hilarious, you must admit. Folks who want to use the "term that is considered most appropriate" -- ie, Indian or Native American? My PC friends say Native American and correct me when I say Indian. My Hopi friend, however, calls himself an Indian.
At work recently, we had an extremely silly version of this same thing happen: we had a new young writer who happened to be black and happened to be Canadian. But the editors and sales people were stumbling all over themselves not to say the word "black" so they kept saying "Afro-American" -- I then pointed out that the young man in question was actually Canadian, so then they started calling him Afro-Canadian. [Okay, technically, he could be called Afro-American, or more precisely, Afro-North American but this sounds even sillier...] But then they decided Afro-Canadian sounded odd, so they said "Canadian writer of color." When I was talking to the writer later on the phone, and relating this story, which he found very amusing, he said "Why didn't they just say black?" [My question exactly.]
Xopher ---
It's probably a little confusing coming into the end of this conversation [which, gee whiz, is about as far from Theresa's original posting about whiny booksellers as possible] --- Ayse and I were initially discussing homelessness in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is why maybe the Telegraph Avenue reference didn't make sense. Sorry about that!
And as far as being able to tell the difference, yes, I think when you live and work in the same area, and see the same homeless and fake-homeless persons over and over and over again, you get to know who's BSing you. For instance, there is one guy in San Francisco, young good-looking guy who dresses very nicely, who comes up to strangers and claims to be part of a NCAA team for a small college. His story is usually along the lines of "I hurt myself during a game, and got left behind and now that I'm well enough to travel I don't have the funds to go home. I have no family and friends and just want a bus ticket to go home."
He's pretty darned convincing, until you notice him pulling the same routine over like a three-month span. Please!
As far as the people you mentioned at the bottom of your post, the ones who dress up in dirty rags and look pathetic, I used to believe that this was an urban legend until I moved to New York. One day I was going to a doctor's appointment on 60th & Madison [which for those of you who don't know New York is kind of an upscale shopping area]. I noticed a man with no legs dressed in rags sort of plopped down on the corner, begging for cash. I think I kind of wondered at the time how a man with no legs and no wheelchair that I could see had actually GOTTEN himself to that corner but I was late for my appointment so it went out of my head. On the way back to the subway after the appointment, however, I was very surprised to see a big SUV pull up in front of the legless beggar, a guy get out, pick him up and put him in the front seat. Then he reached into the backseat and picked up another seemingless homeless beggar with no legs and put him in the spot where the first guy had been. The they sort of rehearsed a -- for want of a better phrase -- begging routine. It was fascinating.
The guy in the front seat meanwhile, was busily changing his shirt, exchanging his really stinky rags for a rather snazzy mock turtleneck that sort of looked like it came stright from J-Crew.
I remember that I started laughing out loud at some point. I couldn't decide if I was really pissed off, or was grudgingly admiring these guys for their ingenuity. :-) [And hey, did this guy go out LOOKING for legless homeless men? How did he recruit these guys?]
Tim --
I guess I don't always equate political-correctness with common sense. I have met too many people in my day who spout a belief or idea only because the majority of their friends feel the same way. I prefer to think for myself and have my own opinions even if they differ from those of my friends and colleagues.
I know that most of my friends -- and probably a good deal of folks up here on the board -- don't believe in the death penalty. Myself, I'm not so sure it's such a bad thing. Perhaps the way it's carried out is a bad thing, and perhaps the way that it is distributed amongst the population could be more fair -- I don't know. But hey, when I read about someone like that freak in Milwaukee who was routinely killing and eating young boys, well, I gotta tell you that have no problem with allowing the state to take someone like that out back and pumping a bullet into his head. Problem solved. Permanently. But that's just my opinion.
Similarly, when folks living and working in a major metropolitan area finally decide they're fed-up with being asked to be tolerant of a homeless population that defecates in their doorways, or attacks them with paving stones, or screams at them for not giving out money when they been asked for the hundreth straight time, well, it doesn't make these folks bad people. Doesn't mean they don't feel some sort of empathy. It just makes them honest people who are fed-up and trying to live their lives without being harrassed all the time.
I know that when I lived in San Francisco, I was gradually worn down by having confrontations with the homeless every single day. In the morning, to leave my apartment, I would have to have an argument that nearly always threatened to turn physical to get the homeless guy who camped on my stoop to move in order for me to pass and leave for work. In the end, I started pouring water on the stoop at night, so it would pool up and keep the stairs wet so that the guy would stop sleeping there. Was it cruel of me? Maybe. I don't really care. I sure felt safer after that, though.
I was hit up for money, or screamed at by crazy people an average of forty times a day. At work, we'd have to clean the feces off our front and back doors every morning. I was physically attacked by one crazy homeless woman who decided that she didn't like the color green I was wearing. I had a beer bottle thrown at me by another when I said -- politely -- that I didn't have any spare change. I was menaced at outdoor ATMs by homeless men. I was threatened while leaving work late at night by three particularly nasty homeless guys who hung around our front door. And I just got plain sick of it.
I knew that some of the folks I encountered every day couldn't help what happened to them. I knew that some of them weren't responsible for their own actions. But you know what? In the end, I am not a social worker, nor do I want to be. I am an ordinary person trying to get through my day as best I can without hurting others or myself.
You can think that's as callous as you like, but I would bet you that there are an awful lot more people that agree with me than might admit publicly to their "PC" friends.
Ayse --
Except that I know what I'm talking about, and you don't, because you didn't read what I wrote before you lashed out. I'm not talking about somebody who is seeking out help and needs a cell phone and internet access and use of a shower to try to get on her feet again. I've been that person, thank you very much, and I don't need to read a fricking blog in order to "sympathize" with somebody whose experience you think I don't understand because you completely missed the context of a statement I made.
I'm talking about somebody who clearly has no desire to work to earn money, who has no reason other than lack of inclination for not working, who indeed thinks they should be given money by other people, because that's how mommy and daddy raised them. This is somebody who is capable of having a job but instead is sitting on the sidewalk in Telegraph Avenue, begging for money and smoking a joint and talking about how property is, like, totally facist, man, and in the mean time sporting a $400 camera phone and $300 custom Doc Martens. This is somebody who yells "fucking bitch!" at me, when I say "no, thanks" to giving them another handout, as I try to walk by. This is a person who I later see charging a bunch of clothes on a credit card at the store down the street where I can't afford to shop.
Rock on! I couldn't have said it better myself.
There IS a difference, and when you're someone who actually DOES work for a living, making $6.00 an hour and working two jobs and sharing an apartment with five people so you have enough money to keep a roof over your head but still be able to give your mom money every month because she is on a fixed income and the cost of her meds and her rent and her food every month exceed what Social Security deems it is possible for disabled elderly person to live on, well, you get a real hair up your ass about being asked for money in the street by kids sporting $2000 in tattoos and $300 shows.
Tom --
I'm talking about folks who had a choice, and chose to be homeless, or pseudo-homeless. It's a bizarre concept to me to choose this lifestyle out of laziness or to affect some sort of stance against the system, when there are so people out there who did not have that choice and -- in the case of the many mentally ill folks out there -- will *never* have that choice.
The Sixties are over; these people needed to go get a life long ago.
As someone who grew up in a family that was desperately poor, and yes -- for a brief time homeless as well -- I find it utterly mind-boggling that there are people who would choose to live this way.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 46 |
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