27 posts tagged “i heart america”

What is the most annoying stereotype people say about the country or place where you're from?

About New Mexico:  "Oh, do you need a passport to come to the U.S., then?  Wow, you speak really good English!"  And so forth.  One of my friends from NM went to Chicago and someone actually asked her if her family followed the buffalo.  She was only in 4th grade at the time, and she was totally confused.  We don't even have buffalo in NM, let alone follow them.  We actually shop at supermarkets there, like most Americans.  Because we are Americans.  It gets so bad at times that one of NM's senators had the US Congress pass some resolution to make a special "New Mexico is a State!" Day.  I think it's in June.  We celebrate it by kicking up our feet with a nice cold margarita and arguing the finer points of living in teepees.  (Just as an aside, the native people of New Mexico do not and never did live in teepees.  Just so we're clear.)

About Arkansas:  Oh, all the ones about the South.  Yes, we're all members of the KKK.  We all used to own slaves and wish we still did.  We all marry our siblings when we're still teenagers.  Etc.  Pick your stereotype.  At least the stereotypes about New Mexico are stupid but essentially harmless.  The stereotypes that let all non-Southerners dismiss people on intellectual, emotional, and moral levels--those are harmful stereotypes.  My dad used to pick up on it when someone had the idea that anyone with a Southern accent was a half-wit bigot and play up his accent, making it thicker and thicker, until the crucial moment when he would demonstrate that he was actually smarter than they were (and not a bigot, btw). 

About rural America:  These are quite similar to the ones about the South.  Yeah, none of us out here care about the environment the way you incredibly superior urbanites do.  We are also bigots.  We blindly follow the words of our church leaders, because we are very stupid.  We vote exclusively Republican, for the same reason.  We carry guns and drive trucks because we either have penis envy (women) or are concerned that we have small penises (men), and not because they are useful tools at all.  We are hateful and spiteful and all up in your business all the time about every little thing.  Also, apparently urbanites don't gossip, because I hear that a lot, that small-town people gossip.  OK.  You get the idea.  It's all ridiculous and stupid and can be harmful, because, again, it allows urban people to totally dismiss rural people on intellectual, emotional, and moral levels.  Don't think that's true?  Oh, well, go read "Urban Archipelago" and see what I mean.  Yeah, rural people can read, actually. 

About America, in general:  I think we all know these ones, too.  I used to make my ESL students, at the end of their second semester in American university, write an essay that gave some of the stereotypes that they had of America and whether or not they had found those to be true during their stay here.  Those essays were quite illuminating.  Of course, many of them were along the lines of, "I thought all the women would look like [pick a movie star--Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan came up the most often], but actually some American women are really ugly."  And the Russians all seem to have come to the US with the impression that Americans are fat and lazy and then found out that, actually, people here are very "sportif."  Heee.  Apparently some of my Russian students speak French (also, most of the Russians had very definite opinions about American drinking--we either drank too much or not enough or just in the wrong way, but our alcohol habits came up a lot in the Russian papers). 

But a lot of them were along the lines of "Americans don't really care about anything" or "In America, everyone is equal" or "In America, there is no rigid hierarchy" and overall they found all of those to be untrue.  My Japanese students in particular didn't know how to handle the fact that the US has a surface equality--we call professors by their first names, for example--but it's only on the surface.  Japanese students tended to either keep Japanese-ish formality in their interactions with others, which made it hard for them to make friends and made their professors uncomfortable, or they went way too far and took the surface equalities for fact.  One thing no student ever wrote but that I basically inferred from the sum of their papers is that they think that American culture either does not exist or exists only on the surface.  Europeans and Asians alike are guilty of this.  They all think that since America is "young" compared to their cultures and also has a very superficial superficiality to it, that there is nothing behind it, no substance or depth.  It's an attitude that I've ridiculed before, but it's one that even some Americans unthinkingly hold, especially ones who are critical of the nation of their birth.  But it's patently incorrect.  American culture certainly has roots in Europe, especially the Enlightenment, but it's wrong to think that the US is merely offering a superficial take on what is essentially European culture.  The things we care about are thus not the same things that people in other cultures care about, but it's false to say that Americans don't care about anything. 

The thing is that these stereotypes about America don't harm me particularly; for the most part, I don't give a fig what people in other countries think of us.  Holding these stereotypes did greatly affect my students' abilities to interact appropriately with Americans, though, and colored their time here.  I don't especially care, on a day-to-day basis, what urbanites think of me, or Northerners, or whatever.  Stereotypes prevent real interaction and real learning, though.  And that's kind of sad, especially when (just as an example) Democrats need some votes from the South and/or the rural West, people they have nothing but contempt for, contempt so complete that they think we can't or don't even read the insults they hurl at us.  But here's a tip:  If you want someone to vote for your party or your agenda, you might not ought to call them bigots and treat them like they're just too stupid to even talk to.  At the very least, recognize that this behavior makes you a bigot.  Mmmmm-kay?

What does it mean to you to be patriotic?

Ummmmmmmm........getting drunk and then lighting a dead tree out in the yard on fire by shooting bottle rockets off.  Sweet!

Also, buying my son a $0.69 miniature American (made-in-China) flag while we were shopping because he is under the mistaken impression that it's a colorful fan, and he was hot, I guess.  Actually he knows it's a flag, but he thought it was a flag-fan.

I don't know, man.  I don't really know what it means to "love America."  I like living here, at least in the part of America where I live.  If I didn't like it well enough, I suppose I wouldn't have come back.  I like American music, from jazz to bluegrass to rock.  I like American music best, baby, and certainly more than that sissy British stuff.  I think the ideals that America was founded on are good ones, and it upsets me when we deviate too much from them.  I find the color combination of heroic red, pure white, and navy blue to be aesthetically pleasing, and bald eagles are some cool muthafekkin birds. 

I would go so far as to say that I love American music.  I would say that I love American literature.  I love the Rocky Mountains.  Certainly, especially since returning from Concrete Nation (aka Japan), I love the vast tracts of public forest and grasslands and the rivers that are more or less natural and public and available for fine, fine swimming and fishing.  I love the backyard BBQ party, and I love road trips, the kind of road trips I think you can only really have in America (maybe Canada, if you can make it past Roosville).  I love Southern food and the old ladies who cook the most amazing pie you ever tasted or could imagine.  For that matter, I love fried pie.  Fried pie...it even sounds delightful, doesn't it?  I even love Frito pie, though only on a hot day after swimming, eating it while driving down the road with my hair still damp and uncombed, hanging my bare feet out the truck window while listening to Johnny Cash. 

In the end, the country you grow up in is the one tied up in all your memories, isn't it? 

I'm not sure that any of this amounts to patriotism, because I have no real idea of what it would mean to love "America."  The idea of America?  The government?  The culture?  America's citizens?  Obviously there are many things about our government that I find stupid, irritating, vexing, and outright enraging--same with our culture and our citizenry. 

Well, at any rate it is clear that I do not love my country the way Stephen Colbert does, so I think I'm going to have to answer no.

Also, I sometimes eat Vegemite, seditious wench that I am. 

OK, I've been puzzling over the health care plans put forth by Clinton and Obama (and Edwards, not that it matters anymore).  I've read them.  I've read commentaries on them.  And there are still some things I don't get.

How are these requirements that insurance suddenly become universal (in that no one can be denied on the basis of preexisting conditions and so forth) and also affordable supposed to work?  I mean, as far as I can tell, both plans are still working through mostly private insurers--that is, insurance companies that exist to make profit.  I think that a) the insurance companies are going to put up one hell of a fight about that and b) Congress and the courts won't go for it anyway, because requiring companies to do this sort of thing seems like a government intrusion into business that no one will actually approve.

Also, how exactly are we going to mandate (Clinton does; Obama not, apparently) that everyone buy insurance of some kind without also having pretty far-reaching solutions for the growing lower classes?  I understand Clinton wants to mandate that everyone buy insurance but at the same time index the premiums to income--but we're talking mostly about families who are already stretched to the breaking point.  Real wages haven't gone up in my lifetime; we're losing jobs; we're in a bloody recession!  There are already plenty of us who can technically afford health insurance but still cannot actually afford to go to the doctor for simple things like strep throat*.  I don't see this helping that situation, although they claim that they are going to reduce health-care costs at the same time.  But it is not at all clear to me how exactly this is supposed to happen. 

I understand this has been compared to requiring car insurance, which we already do.  Except that there are actually a lot of people out there who flout that mandate because they either cannot afford or cannot get car insurance.  You can require people to do things that they still do not do--I know this well, as I have a 2-year-old in my house.  Paul Krugman is arguing that Clinton's plan, by mandating that all the poor schleps out there further stretch their budget by buying some kind of health insurance, will get us universal health care.  Mmmm, I doubt it.  It will likely get nearly everyone to be insured, yes, but if they still can't afford to go to the doctor when they need to, I don't think it's much of a victory.

I thought--silly me--that the idea behind universal health care was that all people would be covered and be able to afford to actually use the services of health care providers.  Unless Clinton and/or Obama suddenly comes up with radical plans to greatly reduce the already plentiful economic burdens on those of us who exist between the median income and the poverty line, I really don't see this helping very much. 

Am I too pessimistic, or am I missing some key part of their plans?  O wise readers, please tell me it's one or the other (or both) because otherwise, this poo just stinks.

*Last year, we (my family) were in this position.  This year we're a little better off.  The main difference is not that we have more money but that T's employer offers flexible spending accounts (which Hillary does not approve of, or so I hear) that allow us to deposit a portion of each of his paychecks into a special account we can use for medical expenses.  You get a tax break by doing this, but the tax break doesn't actually save us any money because our tax bracket is already a negative percent.  All it does for us is ensures that there is money for medical expenses.  We don't miss the $34 or whatever per paycheck, and then the money is there when we need it.  However, we don't miss that money mostly because we are excessively, obsessively frugal, and I believe a lot of families in our income bracket would miss it.

The news is out:  Obese people and smokers cost health care systems less money over their lifetimes than thin, "healthy" people do.  

Initial response:  So, I guess all those people who claim to have a virulent hatred of the obese because of the costs to the health care system and the increase in premiums for "healthy" people are going to have to find a new justification for their feelings.  I always thought it was a rather selfish and shallow and unnecessarily monetary justification anyway, but now it's also untrue. 

Second response:  Well, it makes bloody sense, doesn't it?  If the nonobese, nonsmoker types live longer than the others, then over a lifetime, they probably do cost more. 

But wait.  Thin, "healthy" people only live 4 years longer (on average, of course) than obese people?  Four measly years?  So, I'm thinking the people who claim to have seething, roiling hatred of the obese because it's ruining their health and shortening their lives need to find a new justification, as well.  (This, anyway, is added to the CDC's study that demonstrated that overweight people have less mortality than people in the "normal, healthy" weight range.  Favorite takeaway quote:  "Counting deaths is not an exact science."  Really?  Because I would have thought counting deaths is pretty straightforward--you either are dead, or you're not.  Unless you're UNdead, of course, but presumably the undead among us did not get counted, as I doubt they rely on traditional health care services.)

Third response:  "Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives..."  Ah, no.  I have to object to the use of "save" there.  See, the rub of the matter is that we're all going to die.  Some of us will die of heart disease, some in knife fights, some by getting hit by the proverbial bus, some of us will be fortunate enough to die while we're in one of the Kama Sutra positions.  But preventing obesity will not save anyone's life--they might die later than they otherwise would have, or they might not.  They might die of a stroke instead of diabetes, although that is impossible to know. 

No, sorry.  If you want to hate on the obese, that's your business, of course, but it is not right to hate on them for economic reasons or because you (disingenuously) claim to want to "save" their lives.  If you want to hate on the obese, do so honestly.  Admit that obesity disgusts you, because you think obese people are immoral and engaging in at least two (and possibly more) of the 7 Deadlies and utterly lack self-control.  Admit that you're afraid you'll catch it and be unable to fit into your jeans.  It's alright.  Most people will understand, as those are similar to the reasons most people dislike the obese and want to "help" them. 

That doesn't mean there is no good reason to prevent obesity when it is possible to do so.  It seems to be that obese and even overweight people, in general, are less healthy overall while they are alive.  It is possible that the quality of life suffers for many obese people, although that's hard to measure (and it is entirely possible that lower quality of life is directly related to being discriminated against).  But those things hardly warrant the bigotry and the invasive measures our government is undertaking to prevent "the epidemic."

Oh, and P.S., America isn't the #1 country for obesity anymore, it appears.  You know why?  Because we suck at everything.  Ha Ha Ha.

I was just talking to my mom a bit ago about the Democrats and gun control, and she indicated to me that the Dems have started saying that gun control is an issue better left up to lower levels of government.  If this is true, this is the most politically savvy thing I've seen the Democrats do in a long time.  I had just been telling Mom that gun control is one place where Democrats and "liberals" usually lose me and make me want to give a spite vote to Huckabee (of course, deep down I really just like Huckabee because what a fun name!  How jolly it would be to refer to President Huckabee for 4 years of Bible camp!  It lends itself so nicely to Copy-Guy-style nicknaming--the Huckmeister, Huckarama, Huckabeetle, etc.  ahem.) because I believe most gun control policy at the federal level is an attempt to solve an urban problem with a universal measure. 

Let me explain.  Out here in Jesusland, guns are tools.  We use them to procure food for our families--not by holding up a Safeway but by hunting and/or killing our livestock.  We use them to ward off predators from our poultry and livestock.  We use them to put down suffering animals.  We also shoot for sport--targets, skeet, beer cans, whatever--but we grow up with them around as tools.  They have nothing to do with machismo or penis size, as some liberals will assert--I wish I thought they were only saying those things in jest, because it makes them sound simple-minded and bitter.  They have nothing to do with being tough or cool.  They just are.  They are akin to cars, only they often last longer, getting handed down from generation to generation.  My first rifle was my stepdad's first rifle, and it will be my son's first rifle.  If only our Toyota would last that long.

In cities, or so I am given to understand, gun crime is a gigantic problem.  Out here in Jesusland, there are virtually no murders--seriously, dudes, the most exciting stories on the news are usually about the weather.  (oooh, blizzard warning!  The lead story in spring/fall is often about whether we are anticipating frost.)  Gun crime is a problem for our nation, America as a whole, yes.  But out here we think, reasonably, that it might do to put more severe limitations on guns in circumstances where it will actually help prevent crime than impose it on someone who just wants to get the coyotes out of the chicken coop. 

And, essentially, every election cycle for years now, the Democrats have been losing votes on this issue (not only this one--there are others, but this has been a big one in the West).  It is never a Republican who dismisses sport/target shooting as stupid and frivolous.  It is never a Republican who dismisses hunters as barbarians (ah, because it's so much more civilized to eat meat that has been subject to the industrial feedlot system, killed for you with manure still on him, semi-cleaned, and wrapped in plastic).  It is never a Republican who wants to tell a farmer who has used a gun as a tool all of his life that he is irresponsible, likely to become a "nut" and a criminal at any minute, and go on a shooting spree down at the local bar.  Those kinds of statements always come from the left, and they alienate those of us who are Democratically inclined but rural. 

Also, why do you blame the gun for gun crime?  Do you blame the car for traffic fatalities?  Oh, and incidentally, last I checked, there were more traffic fatalities in America than there were gun-related murders.  Why aren't we more anti-car?  But I think this dude put it really well when he said,

Why do you cover high murder rates and seldom mention how unsafe our cities are for those driving, walking, or bicycling? I know the answer – it’s the same concept as when I get scared when my plane takes off and I don’t think twice about driving in a car – the fear of the spectacular. A plane crash and the murder of an innocent person are spectacular events. Unfortunately, the death of over 40,000 Americans each year in cars and the numerous deaths of pedestrians and bicyclists rarely make the news.

There are other issues where "liberals" alienate wide swaths of the population, myself included, and I've decided to go ahead and go over some of these in the next few days.  I am quite certain most of you will dislike it, but my point, it should be remembered, is that I am in essential agreement with nearly all liberal goals (as, incidentally, are most of the people of this country).  It's the fucking rhetoric that gets tossed off on the liberal side that threatens to totally alienate me, and I should think liberal types and Democrats would want to win over every Western/rural vote they can get.  Only winning the reliably blue urban/coastal areas isn't enough. 

I am not going to pick on the Republican/conservative rhetoric in the same way.  Why?  Yes, it is a mess as well, but a) it has been a more politically effective mess in recent years, and b) it is widely known that I already disagree with most of it anyway. 

And also, and keep this in mind, I am going to employ a shorthand in which I refer to several types of person under the very rough banner "liberal."  All of these people--academic types, "feminists" who publish "feminist" blogs, registered Democrats, Green Party geeks, gay rights activists, Nation columnists, and so forth--are prone to voting Democrat-ish and often identify themselves as "liberal" or "left," so I'm going to conveniently group them together and let them know exactly where they lose me and others like me.  I'm not doing this to be assy and vindictive--I'm going this because I want the Democrats to stop losing votes for senseless reasons and win.  I want them to understand why they have trouble out here in the Rocky Mountain West and, increasingly, in the South (when the South was traditionally Democrat) so they can come to some kind of solution and win the hell out of the next election.

On a brighter note, let us all stop for a moment and give thanks that we now have less than one year remaining of the Bush-whackery.  Perhaps we will survive.

It snowed all day.  All day and most of last night, and apparently it's set to do it again tonight.  When that happens, you have to really stay on top of the snow removal or else you get stranded (particularly when you drive a Toyota Yaris that has, like, 5 inches of ground clearance).

So I was out shoveling out the driveway (or, really, mostly sweeping it, as it is very, very dry snow) and a neighbor came up riding an ATV with a snowplow attachment and offered to plow our driveway out for us.  I respectfully and gratefully declined--it was nice of her to offer.

But this is one of the things that I think is so intensely stupid about modern American life.  It's a driveway and a front stoop; it took about 10 or 15 minutes of sweeping to get it totally cleared out (granted that has a lot to do with it being such powdery snow).  Meanwhile, for those 10 or 15 minutes, I created no pollution, I spent no money, and I got some exercise.  I also got to have fun with my son, who loves helping sweep and shovel, and the dogs who enjoyed wading through the virgin meter or so of snow accumulated in the front yard.  Why would I want a machine to do that for me?  What would I really gain from it?  I'd get less exercise, pump out noise and air pollution, and free up 10 minutes maybe ...to do what, exactly?

There is a pattern in which Americans will pay for something to make their life more convenient by doing some bit of trivial work for them, then pay to go to a gym or pay for exercise equipment (which, likely, they don't use enough) and go do that separate from their chores, then in the overall scheme of things, it's saving them nothing.  Maybe they get a little extra time, which most studies suggest they spend sitting unproductively on their asses watching reality shows.  Feh. 

I think about the garden the same way.  True, it's a lot of work, although it could be done in easier ways than I did last year, and the canning and freezing take time and effort and forethought.  On the other hand, it's work that, again, creates relatively little (canning and freezing create some, but far less than the alternatives would) pollution, gives us exercise and vitamin D from all the being out in the sun.  The alternative is to not garden, work more hours for money that I can then exchange for food--food that creates an unknown quantity of pollution and does not require me to exercise.  Most importantly to me, the time spent gardening is time spent with my family, as we garden together, while time spent working more hours to make more money is time spent away from my family.  It's also time spent caring for living things and getting back in touch with nature and the season cycle.  My most high-tech piece of gym equipment is a wheelbarrow, and my son is getting quite an education while we're out there, too.  It's all win-win. 

Our bodies need to do hard work, and so do our minds.  The human body and brain were not meant to spend most of the day sitting, let alone sitting reading gossip web sites and watching TV.  Until T and I are much too old and infirm to handle a snow shovel and a rake, I expect we'll carry on like this.  You wanna feel our biceps?

Can I just say one thing?  I swear I will keep this short. 

Just because someone disagrees with you, that does not automatically make them evil or ignorant or irrational.  I think this country world would make more progress if we'd kind of stop it with the name calling and maybe try understanding.  Like, if someone's a Christian Republican who worries about the Pledge of Allegiance and gay marriage and doesn't agree with your lefty ways, perhaps you could try for just a minute to understand their perspective instead of immediately dismissing them as herdlike, stupid, etc.  And if someone's a WTO-protesting, tie-dye wearing lefty and therefore opposes your laissez-faire capitalism thing, maybe you should take a minute to ask them why.  Maybe if we could all stop spouting venom at the least sign of disagreement we might work out some compromises, find some roads forward.

If there is one thing I've learned from Aristotle it's that the mean is usually the best place to be, not either extreme.  If there's one thing I learned from Socrates, it's that your dearly held belief is very often indefensible, no matter how rational you think it is.  If there is one thing I learned from, oh, life, it's that most people can't listen (listen, I mean, with an ear to actually understanding) for shit.

Me, I'm not a Christian.  In the spirit of Aristotle and Buber, I try to understand where Christians are coming from, though.  And what I think is that in America, the Christian Right--the much-feared evangelicals--would virtually cease to exist if there wasn't such a deep and difficult divide between urban/rural and wealthy/struggling.  We have a lot of people in this country who are scared and feel helpless and anxious (my family is perpetually one step away from economic disaster--and I do mean disaster--but we have a lot more options than many people in this country do, as we can leave), who feel pretty certain that the life their kids will have will be worse in most ways than their own lives have been.  Fear and helplessness come out in all kinds of ways, and one way is this fundamentalism we're seeing.  If you really want progress, there is some serious fixing that needs to be done.  Shouting at each other won't get that fixing done.  Listening might be a good place to start.

I've listened to country music my entire life, and I've always loved it.  Whether the country music in question has been Buck Owens or Lucinda Williams, Randy Travis or Jerry Jeff Walker, it has always sounded like the truest, realest music to me.  It has always been music about my life and perfectly suited to the landscape it comes from.

But, you know, eventually I went off to college and got all surrounded by city people--people who drive 4-wheel drives that have never been off road--and learned to my dismay that country music is not acceptable.  Oh, sure, the occasional person might sniff something about Johnny Cash (particularly since his American Recordings) or maybe Hank Williams--and there has been some interest in alt.country singers like Gillian Welch and Kelly Willis in recent years.  Mainstream country, though--country radio?  No way. 

Now, most of the time this seems to me a kneejerk reaction.  Most of these people have no idea at all what is even on country radio.  Yet they completely dismiss an entire genre of music in a way that would be considered ignorant or even racist if the music in question were, say, rap instead of country.

That isn't actually the part that bothers me.  Fine, you don't want to listen to country--I could give a fuck.  What bothers me is that the automatic assumption about country music is that it is ignorant, backwards in all its social outlooks, and jingoistic.  Toby Keith is often cited in defense of those positions, primarily because his obnoxious song about sticking a boot up someone's ass is one of the only country songs of recent years people even know of.

To argue, though, that mainstream country is all like Toby Keith (who is, anyway, a registered Democrat) is akin to saying that all of rap is about fucking bitches and then shooting them.  It says way more about what you've heard than the genre itself.  And I'm really starting to resent the implication that everyone who listens to country is some stupid hillbilly who doesn't know what a latte is. 

I was just listening, yet again, to one of my favorite songs of the past year, Dierks Bentley's "Every Mile a Memory."  It's not a political song at all, and none of his songs really are, so I have no idea where he stands on the patriotism question or on the war or any of that.  It doesn't have an especially country sound (which I guess irritates the purists, but to hell with them).  What it does have are some incredibly well-written and (can I even say this?) poetic lyrics.  It's a beautiful song.  Words like that aren't written by the kind of person the average country listener is alleged to be.

Or there is the case of Brad Paisley's "Alcohol."  I don't know--are there mainstream songs hitting the top of the charts in other genres that reference Hemingway?  Yeah, we're all just a bunch of ignorant hillbillies sitting around out here making jokes about Hemingway.  I remember as a kid listening to that Don Williams song--is it called "Good Old Boys"?--and he says, "Those Williams boys they still mean a lot to me, Hank and Tennessee" and wondering what the hell?  I knew Hank Williams, sure enough, but what had Tennessee to do with anything.  Obviously, I figured out that he meant the playwright.  Hmm, yeah, another stupid redneck.

As far as the war songs and the jingoism goes, it is true that following 9/11 there was an upsurge in that kind of shit.  It is also true that country music listeners (and makers) have a strong link to the military; the South is a military place (I just read somewhere that nearly half of Army recruits are from the South, which is amazing considering how small the South is).  It is also true, though, that Alan Jackson's song about 9/11 gets more consistent radio play these days than the Toby Keith ass-kicking ones (and also won more awards and sold more copies, etc.).  While some of you undoubtedly dislike the Christian bent of it, you can easily recast it in more secular terms (though you sacrifice melodic structure and rhyme):  Faith, hope, and love are some great things we're capable of, and the greatest is love.  There's your fucking jingoism.  Incidentally, while these songs don't make radio anymore, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Emmylou Harris, and other huge country stars all came out with antiwar songs--not to mention, of course, my beloved Steve Earle who came out with, like, a couple of antiwar albums, not just a song. 

And I know some people are going to be all "Dixie Chicks!"  Yeah, I love 'em, they're awesome, and what happened sucked.  But it's also something of an anomaly.  It's true that radio stations don't play Willie's antiwar songs, but they really just don't play Willie Nelson at all anymore.  He's considered alt.country now, too, because...well, who knows why, really, but he actually always was alt.country, but back then they called it "Outlaw."  Whatever.  Anyway, other country stars have, in fact, criticized the president in bold, blunt terms and not suffered the fate of the Dixie Chicks.   

Oh, and one more thing about the Dixie Chicks:  In 2002 (therefore, after the hubbub) CMT (like MTV of country music) ranked the Chicks #13 on their list of the 40 most important women in country music.  In subsequent years, when CMT has done specials ranking the 100 best country songs of all time and the 40 greatest country albums of all time, the Chicks have made those lists, too.  So, country music did not entirely become rabid anti-Chicks as is often suggested. 

I also don't really know where the opinion that country music has really backwards views of women comes from.  I assume it has something to do with "Stand by Your Man."  Whenever someone says something like that, though, I just want to wave "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels" or pretty much anything by Loretta Lynn, but especially "The Pill," in their faces.

I don't know.  I think I could have made this post--and, indeed, my entire Vox blog--shorter if I'd just said, "You know, if you want to call something 'ignorant' maybe ya ought to know what you're talking about first."

I've never hid the fact that I hate people.  We suck, almost unilaterally.  We are petty and conniving and vain and incredibly short-sighted.  We will do whatever it takes to get what we want, no matter what state that leaves other people, our environment, or our future in. 

But once in a while, I decide to sally forth and make some effort at giving someone or other the benefit of the doubt.  And you know what happens when I do?

I go to a website that is pondering crucial questions of the Democrat primaries upcoming in Iowa and New Hampshire (and why THE FUCK do those people get to decide for the rest of us anyway?), and there is some person who calls herself a feminist and is blasting Edwards because he apparently forced his weak-kneed, lily-livered, long-suffering wife to do this campaign with him.

Excuse me?  Last I checked, Elizabeth Edwards was a person who was fully capable of deciding whether she wanted to go through with it or not on her own.  I seriously doubt she needs you, Ms. Self-Righteous, to blame her husband for what was most likely a mutual decision.  She was an attorney, see?  She's used to weighing pros and cons and listening to arguments.  She can probably understand those arguments for and against better than you can, you who are soaked in some hypocritical ideology ("women should be allowed to choose, but if they choose anything that favors their husband, then they are obviously being steamrolled by his phallus" or whatever the stupid fuck).

Could we please not do this anymore, ladies?  Could we please, please stop assuming that anytime a woman does something that in any way benefits a man, a man she apparently loves no less!, that she is an unthinking, brainwashed, product of the patriarchy?  Elizabeth Edwards seems like a cool person, an intelligent person, and my heart just fucking breaks for them with the death of their son and the breast cancer and all.  And I just cannot stand that anyone would think she wasn't capable of telling her husband that she couldn't go through with the campaign (and the corollary assumption is, of course, that even if she had, he is such an ambitious asshole that he would have ignored her, right?)  Grrrrrr.  Big grrrrrr. 

Also, just because someone believes something you don't, they are not automatically "evil."  Let's leave the word "evil" for the big guys, like Dick Cheney. 

Is it really any wonder that I immerse myself in seed catalogs, gardening, and candy-making?  The lollipops do not give me grief because I could be so much more of a feminist if I were off doing something else, like running for President.  The seeds and garden tell me only peaceful, relaxing things like, "Yes, we will happily nourish you, and someday you will die and nourish us.  It's a pretty good deal for the plants because that's, uh, a lot of fat-soluble vitamins you must be packing around.  I mean, no offense, but how many peppermint patties did you eat, exactly?"

Damn, I have eaten too many peppermint patties this season.  But how often do you get homemade peppermint patties?  Not often enough, I tell you.  I need to open a little bakery and candy shop and spend my life with food.  Food makes me happy.

I think this map is very telling.  I have tried and tried to tell people that "The South" is not the Republican stronghold they think it is.  The West is more solidly Republican than the South, but for some reason, everyone wants to blame the South.  Feh.  Blame Texas is what I always say.  Actually, I usually say "Blame Canada," but I can't see what Canad has to do with this particular question.

Anyway, a couple of things for people, foreign or otherwise, who fail to adequately understand our system here.  We have a winner-take-all system, rather than a proportional system, so if 51% of the county or state or whatever the relevant geographic area is votes Republican, it's Republican, and the other 49% be damned.  That's part of why the Green Party and the Libertarians can never get anywhere. 

Also, due to the fucked-uppedness of the Electoral College system (in all but a couple of states), whichever party wins the state, wins the fucking state.  In other words, I lived in Montana when Ralph Nader ran against Bill Clinton and Bob Dole.  I knew Dole was going to win Montana; it was fairly obvious.  I also knew that there were not nearly enough people in Montana who would even consider voting for Nader to skew that result, i.e., assuming all people who voted for Nader in the state of Montana would have voted for Clinton, it would not have given Clinton the win over Dole.  Essentially that means that any vote in Montana for anyone other than Dole was essentially a wasted vote because Dole won the state election, which means that all of Montana's electors in the Electoral College voted for Dole. 

Basically because I always live in the "red states" and I never vote Republican, my vote is always wasted, which is a very comforting thought.  I may as well be voting for Mickey Mouse or Noam Chomsky or Frank Zappa (who is dead).  I frequently vote Libertarian or Green Party even if I have no friggin idea about the particular candidates because at some point, if the third party gets some percentage of the popular vote (I want to say it's 5%, but I could be wrong) they can start applying for federal campaign funding or some such shit. 

Feh.  I actually wanted to vote for Nader.  Although, hmmm, Chomsky...that sounds like a great idea.  Our foreign policy would sure as hell look different.

Anyway, I'm just a little tired of some of the red state/blue state shit.  The divide is neither as historically long nor as ideologically deep as some hysterical types want to make it out to be.