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Sue— shit ain’t changed, bitch. Y’all need to stfu. It be Friday. And I be drunk. And they still ain’t changing shit - one white girl goes missing in the Carribean and Nancy Grace be all over that shit. Fuck you!
(Liz - who is 1/2 black)
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
“I just think you’re dreadful, and I honestly don’t want to talk to you anymore.” — Anderson Cooper reminds us to say what we mean and mean what we say.
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There was one sign above all that I thought was unique. It was held by a tall fellow with long arms marching on Harrison Street toward Michigan Avenue. He held it high with his right hand. It had two words:
Ron Paul.
Don’t think this excerpt from John Kass’s column about the NATO protests was intended as parody, but I’m giggling a little bit. Altogether, though, it’s a slightly hack-ish but not entirely off-base take on this weekend’s events — at any rate, he ably captures the sentiment of being an apathetic bystander who’s not completely at odds with the message, but deeply cynical about its purpose or ability to affect anything. Which is not really a useful POV, but you know: newspaper columnists.
It was strange being in Chicago this weekend while these protests were going on. I consider myself reasonably politically aware, I guess: I subscribe to The Economist, I dabbled in political science, I went to Occupy Wall Street when I thought Radiohead was playing, etc., but I wasn’t entirely sure about the point of the protests despite being generally aligned with the more reasonable progressive elements behind them — e.g. down with ceaseless global capitalism, down with a mandated war state. Compared with OWS, which didn’t seem so much your typical organized protest as a sustained effort to change people’s perspectives about things — I could be misremembering due to unnecessary nostalgia, though — the NATO protests felt inorganized, limited (purposely so, because of Mayor Rahm’s anti-protesting initiatives, but still) and altogether not entirely helpful to the cause.
I mean: I empathize, but when the face of your protest is a group of guys charged with terrorism for plotting to bomb the Obama campaign headquarters, something has gone wrong. And yeah, maybe they were entrapped, and maybe it’s a hoax, and it’s all just a media emphasis anyways and not entirely fair to be focused on, but that’s how the game goes. Any grand political event that happens these days will be judged by the absolute worst; it’s up to the proactive side to make sure the best is ably displayed. Unfortunately, I don’t think that happened here. The sight of black-clad anarchy-screaming protesters is so easy to lambast because it seems so out of touch; we knew these kids in high school, maybe, and knew how they channeled their reflexive rage toward something not productive but instead a little meandering, not to judge the people we knew and didn’t want to be but any outsider can see how someone or something isn’t moving from point A to B or from A to anywhere, but instead just a floating locus of dissatisfaction and unrest.
Which, yeah, I empathize with, but eventually you’ve got to start wondering about the delivery method if things aren’t taking the way you think they should. OWS seemed like a partial success when it was slowly pushing people to think about things in a different way more easily applicable to IRL — like maybe don’t prioritize money and material want so much in your day to day life, and you might be a little happier. The fact that it was sustained over a period of many weeks helped with that a little. I don’t see what lasting effect the NATO protests had or will have, except, as Kass points out, to ensure that future meetings won’t be held in Chicago. (Glib, but true.) A friend of mine said he was talking to one of his protester friends who said something like, “I feel I’m waiting for a revolution that’s never going to come.” His response, and mine too: “Well, yeah.”
[video]
“Waka flocka flocka waka flocka flocka waka flocka FLOCKA! / Waka flocka flocka waka waka flocka flocka yeah! Waka flocka flocka flocka BRIIIIIIIIIIHSQUUUUUAAAAAD!! FLOCKA!” — TuneWiki transcription of the lyrics to Waka’s “Bustin’ At ‘Em”
JUST SAYIN’
“Freedom is merely an illusion of your mind. So don’t give me that bull crap about being free to choose your sexual preferences or any other personal obsessions. Nobody is free, We are all bound by space, time, and DEATH.” — Maybe the best WSJ comment I’ve ever seen, on an article about Floyd Mayweather Jr. seizing dat opportunity to support gay marriage
“The Director of the Baghdad District Police for the Interior Ministry has received official approval to eliminate the ‘emo’ phenomenon, also known as the slaves of Satan. Emo, which is derived from the English word ‘emotional,’ has enjoyed widespread influence among teenagers, who change their appearance, behavior, and opinions depending on their emotions. Colonel Mushtaq Talab Muhammadawi said emo was discovered in Baghdad by members of the directorate, who researched it before bringing the case to the Interior Ministry. The phenomenon appears to have spread specifically in Baghdad’s schools, but because the ministry lacks a female cadre, it was unable to fully investigate the phenomenon, which is prevalent among girls aged fourteen to eighteen years. These girls wear strange, tight clothes with graphics like skulls, use school materials shaped like skulls, wears earrings in their noses and tongues, and have other strange features.” — From a February 13, 2012, statement by the Iraqi Interior Ministry, removed from the agency’s website in March. Translated from the Arabic by S.T. McNeil (Harper’s, June 2012)
My pal Jim and I found a wallet on the street last night belonging to a 39-year-old real estate agent in Queens. Jim found him on Facebook and we’re working out plans to get it back to him.
But first, we printed out this photo and slid it in the back behind all his cards.