Details; or, Me Chinese, Me Play Joke

My sophomore year of college I took a semester of Mandarin. It was a five-day-a-week class, but I thought we only met on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I missed the first Monday of class. I showed up the next day, thinking it was the first day. When the professor walked in, she was greeted with a chorus of "Ni hao!" and other Chinese pleasantries. I was flummoxed. I seemed to be the only one in class who knew no Chinese. I still didn't realize the mistake I had made regarding the schedule, so I didn't go to the class the following day, either. Naturally, on Thursday I was even further behind. After class my professor asked why I had missed two days, and suddenly I felt like an even bigger idiot than I had when I felt I was the only one in class who couldn't speak Chinese. Everything turned out okay in the end (except that I only got a B in the class and I don't remember any Chinese).

Mmm Whatcha Say?; or, This Blog Kills Fascists

Speaking of pet peeves, another of mine is when people (knowingly or unknowingly) misinterpret song meanings, especially when they then try to use the song for a cause which stands in conflict with the artist's intent.

The best known example of this phenomenon is probably Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." Written as a criticism of the Vietnam War, it has been re-purposed as a generic patriotic anthem, as anyone who has ever seen a fireworks display on the Fourth of July can attest.

I got in a little hometown jam
And so they put a rifle in my hands
Sent me off to Vietnam
To go and kill the yellow man

Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man says, "Son, if it was up to me."
I go down to see the V.A. man
He said, "Son, don't you understand?"

I had a buddy at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there, he's all gone
He had a little girl in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years down the road
Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go

Born in the U.S.A., indeed! A similar situation exists with "Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, where a song with a pretty clear anti-military message has been adopted by the flag-waving crowd.

Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
Oh, they're red, white, and blue
And when the band plays "Hail to the Chief"
Oh, they point the cannon at you, Lord

It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no Senator's son
It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no fortunate one, no

Yeah, some folks inherit star-spangled eyes
Oh, they send you down to war, Lord
And when you ask them, how much should we give?
Oh, they only answer, more, more, more

"Every Breath You Take" by The Police is a favorite at unimaginative wedding receptions, where it is taken as a romantic love song, and not the stalker anthem that it actually is. REM's "Losing My Religion" has nothing to do with religion at all. "Killing an Arab" by The Cure is based on the novel The Stranger by Albert Camus, but that hasn't stopped poorly-read people decrying it as in some way racist.

My all-time favorite misinterpreted song is probably "This Land is Your Land" by Woody Guthrie. A lot of you are probably thinking to yourselves, "What, that song we had to learn in kindergarten? Surely you jest!" Others of you, particularly those of you who did not spend your formative years in the United States, might never have heard the song in question. It is one of the quintessential American songs, and if you attended an American public school (and many Sunday Schools) in the past fifty years, you at least know the first verse.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island
From the Redwood Forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and me.

This warm-and-fuzzy ode to Americana continues for several verses. So where is the misinterpretation, you ask? Well, if you know anything about Woody Guthrie, it is probably one of these three things: 1.) he was the father of the American folk revival of the mid-twentieth century, 2.) he was a communist, and 3.) he played a guitar on which he wrote the phrase, "THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS."



Wait, what was that second one? That's right, the man who penned the song that all of us American children had to memorize before we could tie our shoes was a commie. Oddly enough, we were never taught the last few verses.

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me
Sign was painted, it said "Private Property"
But on the back side it didn't say nothing
This land was made for you and me

As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing"
But on the other side it didn't say nothing
That side was made for you and me

Nobody living can ever stop me
As I go walking that freedom highway
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me

In the squares of the city, in the shadow of a steeple
By the relief office, I'd seen my people
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

What are your thoughts, especially on the repackaging of left-wing protest songs by right-wing nationalists? (Geez, I've been getting awfully political lately, huh?) Have I missed obvious choices?

Rabble Rabble Rabble; or, There's a Sucker Born Every Minute

So I watched this video of the mayor of Lansing, Michigan completely destroy some random goon at Fox and felt like I needed to go on a rambling political rant. It may not be coherent (it's four in the morning, after all), but it is filled with lots of good, old-fashioned left-wing anger! You've been warned.

The far-right, as exemplified by Fox and personified by people like Rush Limbaugh, hate middle and lower class Americans, and indeed anyone who works for a living. They exist only to serve the upper class, big business, and Wall Street. Why don't people see this? The GOP panders to the Puritanical religious beliefs and outdated social fears held by the uneducated poor in rural backwaters to win votes, without ever having to actually deliver anything to their voters.

Who votes Republicans into office? They have two main constituencies: big business, and lower, lower-middle, and middle class people, like farmers, factory workers, small business owners, enlisted military personnel, etc. What do these professions have in common? They are populated largely by people who are from modest backgrounds, they are from the South or Midwest, they are unlikely to have achieved any education past high school, and they are devoutly religious. To put it in the parlance of a politician, they are "simple, honest, hard-working, God-fearing Americans."

So how does Michael Steele convince such a disparate group to join together and vote Republican? Well, the simple answer is he doesn't. He is just awful at his job. But theoretically they do this by fear-mongering and exploiting the prejudices of their lower class voters. It's clear why big business votes GOP - they're the big business party. No judgment, that's just what they are. But what is truly perplexing is why the poor, working classes would vote to elect politicians who, once in office, will do everything in their power to make life miserable for them.

So how exactly does the right exploit these fears and prejudices? Well, they've cornered the market on evangelical Christianity, the biggest business of all. Through this they claim to be the party of "morals" and "values"; the issues on which they base this suppose superiority are the death penalty (killing dark people), huge military expenditures (killing dark people in other countries), abortion (to ensure that there are plenty of children being born to poor single mothers who will grow up, join the military, and kill dark people), gun control (lest dark people or King George III threatens them), etc. You get the point - to the far right immorality is anything related to minorities of any type. Black people, brown people, gays, women, non-Christians - they are all dangerous, they hate America, and they must be stopped.

It is interesting to note that for all its talk, the GOP rarely scores a victory when it comes to so-called moral issues. There are exceptions; the recent piece of racist legislation in Arizona, for instance. But the terms "progressive" and "conservative" aren't accidental. They serve to show on what side of history the left and the right inevitably find themselves. Society progresses, it advances, and it can't be stopped. Take civil rights, women's rights, gay rights - conservatives always lose, and then they look like complete jackasses in the annals of history.

But I get off track. What, when it comes down to it, has the GOP delivered to these "values voters?" They will never touch Roe v. Wade, so abortion is out. Despite what the NRA thinks no one is after their guns, so gun control is a moot issue as well. The Democrats support our insane military budget as much as the Republicans, so credit to the GOP for convincing everyone otherwise. And while there is still a lot of work to do, the treatment of women, gays, and dark people improves all the time. So Republicans get in office by promising these lower class voters that they will do...something about these "issues" that have absolutely nothing to do with them, and then, of course, nothing actually ever comes of it. But what they do is get in bed with the super rich and Wall Street and make life absolutely miserable for everyone else. It's quite a racket they've got going, and would be impressive if it weren't so maddening.

Arrogant Ignorance; or, Everything You Know is Wrong

One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone asserts something to be true when it isn't, or just generally tries to impress you with intelligence they do not possess. You've seen these people - they use words that they don't understand, they attempt to correct others when in fact the original person was right all along, etc. A favorite example of these half-wits is pointing out that Rhode Island is not, in fact, an island, and isn't that a funny name for a state?

Except that, you know, Rhode Island is an island. The state in question is actually named Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and is the result of a merger of the former colonies of (logically enough) Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

It probably wouldn't be so annoying except that the people who engage in such behavior do so in such a smarmy, smug, arrogant way. They don't say these thing to contribute to conversation, but only in an attempt to impress.

Am I alone on this? Does it annoy anyone else when people try to sound intelligent when they really don't know what they're saying?

The Fabric of Our Lives; or, Forty Acres and a Mule

I have never understood these cotton commercials. Why is the cotton industry paying all this money for these ads? Do they expect people to think, "Oh, yeah, I need to pick up some cotton at the store." Do they think people are going to forget about cotton, and need to be reminded of its existence? Ditto milk, cheese, and probably more that I can't think of at the moment.



On the plus side, at least we get to look at Zooey Deschanel.