...or balls at the bell?
While we live according to race, colour or creed | While we rule by blind madness and pure greed | Our lives dictated by tradition, superstition, false religion | Through the eons, and on and on...
In the light of my last post and the merciful fading to memory of the Democratic National Convention, a couple of updates. Any notion that David Weinberger would forsake his blog for a week in favour of a newspaper was sorely misguided. I wrote that late at night or early in the morning. Neuronal activity was slow at the time and my nerves were shot. Well, they must've been, eh? David's blogging of the DNC and his links to others have given this foreigner a comprehensive overview of (or grandstand seat at) a time-honoured American tradition. That said, I think attendees and time will be the only entities likely to honour the DNC in Boston.
As forgetful as the event turned out to be, bloggers mentioned in my post below and countless others made what was otherwise a quiet week on the blogs worth following—and, of all the essays, Jessamyn West's essay on Day 2 stood out. Having read countless reports of the event, I feel the DNC has more in common with a Billy Graham revivalist meeting (replete with pamphlets and placards for the faithful, cued applause, tacky advertising and pre-packaged, mass-consumption messages designed to massage the minds of the numbskull masses) than it has with meaningful political change.
Why not send 15,000 reporters to Afghanistan and Iraq?
Bloggers covered the event well but, beyond the usual suspects, failed to criticise it in great depth. Tom Engelhart, backed by a good post from Frank (yes, with others), represents the exception to numb acceptance. He offers a fine piece dissecting the hysteria and stupefaction attending this inordinately costly exercise designed to anaesthetize the minds of those still in possession of one. Credentialed blogger participation should be reviewed. While paid reporters spent their time nervously denigrating the bloggers and the bloggers spent theirs highlighting reporters' shortcomings, media owners probably sifted through reports in search of pixel-maddened hotshots. They couldn't give a shit where they find them. They want vanilla copy with grab and they'll pay for it. If they can replace paid reporters with underpaid bloggers in dire need of real jobs, they will. And they'll then mess with the newcomers' heads before beating them into a shape acceptable to those footing the bill for their drug habits.
Private participation in such events counts for nothing but the perpetuation of the status quo. In one of her thoughtful barbs to the base on the American Street, Shelley raises the question of gender equity in political representation. Somehow, commenters confused gender with colour. You tell me why—I think people have a hang-up with "multi-culturalism". Theirs is of a particularist nature built on the detritus of "separate but equal" (see Lenny Bruce circa 1962). Anyway, they confused women for the Kenyan delegate who is, when all's said and done, a damned fine orator. But he ain't no "woman".
By the way, what's the big deal with Obama's 'blackness'? Well, the white boys need a token nigger to whitewash their latent racism. But, whether they make him president or not, he should remember where he comes from and, next time he heads for Boston, pack a pair of running shoes. The Marathon's coming up and he can mix it with his homeys while winning one for the
But, much as the air around Barack Obama is suffused with a paternalistic racism, I digress. Shelley's post highlighted for me just how vacuous U.S. politics has become. How do women get representation in business and the Beltway? Here in South Africa, it was easy. In the early 1990s, when the ANC was hammering out detailed policies supplanting those of the National Party, its members demanded that, from the outset, 30 percent of all parliamentarians should be women. The party leadership, which came from the people, knew it would be fatal to mess with the intent of around 10 million South African women voters and buckled like schoolgirls at a Ministry concert.
Female "representativity" in parliament under the National Party government was non-existent and the apartheid state took some pride in its global gender equity ranking of 141. In April 1994, the jackbooted fascists were thrown out and, implementing an initial quota of 30 percent, the ANC leapfrogged South Africa to #9 (we've subsequently slipped to #12 with Rwanda in top spot). The U.S. languishes at #58. Gender equity in parliament is no longer an issue here, bar the need for the Commission for Gender Equality to keep pushing for 50 percent representation. South Africans do not care whether politicians are black, white, brown, male, female, straight or gay. They are all twisted and that's all that matters. In conducting affairs of state, they are not to be trusted and must be watched at all times.
Unable to hide behind facile arguments around gender issues, South African politicians and voters tend to focus on issues relevant to the person in the street. In the United States, women are, to put it bluntly, screwed. The voice of the voter counts for nothing in a country where power-crazed politicians are put into place by a complex comprising military, pharmaceutical, business, academic, energy, financial and other interest groups. Until American men and women reclaim the political process, gender equity will remain what, in the political trade, is politely termed "a low-priority issue".
Today, white American males are a fast-shrinking minority in a country they believe, through conquest, is theirs. In twenty years' time, they will know it's not as they reap the whirlwind of their shortsighted policies and insatiable, self-serving greed. Those policies, hidden in obscene budget deficits and fast-rising Medicare costs, will serve to bind a new and brutal majority born of harsh necessity. I give the masses four more terms of reptilian rule before they rise up and bring Bubba low on Pennsylvania Avenue, there to confess his heinous crimes before being mercilessly beaten and driven out of town like a broken-backed whore.
Why the hell not? Anything would be better than a week choked by sleazy choirboys jerking off on a global stage.
Oh yes we'll keep on tryin' | We'll tread that fine line | Oh oh we'll keep on tryin' | Till the end of time | Till the end of time
Freddie Mercury | Innuendo
