So Ugly It Makes Me Mad
My Abuela said that once. About someone's couch or something, granted, but it works for so much more. Some things really are so ugly they make you mad.
This Is Not a Test
07 Oct 08
I'm leery about watching the Obama/McCain debate tonight. There's something so surreally ugly and getting uglier every moment about this campaign and it's making me anxious. Scratch anxious, it makes me scared. We're watching it, most of us aghast and offended, right, most of us disgusted with how weird and awful the TV ads and the quotes on the news and the YouTube clips and the SNL spoofs are but it's stilll happening. It's not, like, a joke. It's not TV, and it's not a spoof.
This:
The Secret Service is following up on media reports today that someone in the crowd at a McCain/Palin event suggested killing Barack Obama, according to Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley. The shout of "kill him" followed a Sarah Palin rant on Obama's relationship with radical Chicagoan Bill Ayers.
really happened.
So did this:
..McCain asked the crowd "who is Barack Obama?" Immediately you hear someone yell "terrorist." McCain pauses, the audience laughs, and McCain continues on, not acknowledging, not chastising, not correcting.
And this:
Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric's questions for her "less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media." At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African-American sound man for a network and told him, "Sit down, boy."
Because we view this stuff on television, or hear it on the radio, or read about it after the fact on the internet it gives us a safe remove, it distances us and turns the strange, terrible things that really are happening into a form of entertainment.
But it's not. It's real. And it's shameful. And it's dangerous. We're all in danger when an actual person at an actual political rally in our very real country screams "Kill him!" and the real live person on stage who holds the crowd in the palm of their hand does nothing. We're all in danger when a political party can spread a rumor that a candidate for the presidency is a terrorist, and real people, people who will vote, believe it.
We're all in danger when a group of people are willing to fabricate stories from thin air about real human beings simply to win an elected office. Simply for money, and simply for power. We watch it (or don't watch it), and we make uncomfortable jokes about it (or we ignore it) and we're gonna vote on November 4th and everything will be just fine right? but it's still happening. We are a party to this. The people screaming terrorist! and sit down, boy! and kill him!, those people are a part of us. Those people are us. All of us.
I don't know what we're supposed to do. Water still comes from my tap, my kid is still surly, my dog's tail still wags- am I supposed to take to the streets every time a someone yells something stupid in a crowd somewhere? Am I supposed to send an email to my Congressperson every time someone acts their way through a vice presidential debate?
In my world nothing has changed. Probably in yours too. Everything is normal in our own microcosms. But it's not. It's not normal. Something is very, very wrong. And I don't want to watch the debate tonight because I'd prefer to pretend I don't see it, that none of us see it, this, happening. But we do.
If you pray, please pray for peace. If you don't pray, meditate. If you don't meditate, wish.
Shame, Sadness, Grief
It could be worse but not by much.
Useless
14 Oct 08
At dinner with my pal L tonight there was a young couple eating across the way from us. The guy was obviously gacked out on something- nearly toothless, twitchy, he loudly offered his advice on how we could cool down our salsa. The young woman was a little less wasted, mostly hissing at him through clenched teeth and messing a lot with something in her booth.
Their voices rose as our server came to take our order and I gave them my full attention. I couldn't look away, watching him. If he hit her I had to do something. Nothing. Something. If he got uglier, I had to do something. Nothing. Something. I had to watch, just in case so I could do something/nothing for/with/to them both.
Their distress was palpable, and his voice got low and mean and she started to cry as their fight spiraled up eleven notches and she stood, crying, and made as if to leave, then didn't leave, then sat back down, then they hissed curses at each other some more, she stood again and careened back toward the restrooms. He stood, walked around their table and picked up a tiny baby girl from where she'd been laying on the seat next to her mama.
He strapped on a baby carrier, talking to the baby but loudly to himself too. The mom came back still sobbing and sat down, then stood, then sat, then stood, still crying. They paid their bill and left into the rain.
I ordered and ate my dinner. He never hit her, so I sat in a warm restaurant with a good friend and joked a little, gossiped a lot, ate my fill. He never hit her so I did nothing. She was sobbing, silently sobbing, but he never hit her.
But that baby girl had on a fuzzy little white sleeper, and a little soft white hat, with something pink at the crown. The tiniest little white hat you've ever seen. I did nothing.