You don’t write a blog like this to “make people happy” or even “lessen the interminable, soul-crushing boredom suffered by most blog readers everyday.” No, you write a blog like this to piss people off. Thus, I feel like Bush a week into the Iraq War: by the very low standards I’ve set for myself, mission accomplished. I also feel like Bush, because I can’t resist the urge to say, “Suck it, Mom & Dad; I’m successful!” Also, I’ll probably go out and get shitfaced to celebrate, but I digress. So, who are we pissing off? Well, as it turns out, pretty much everyone who reads this blog. In the past month, no fewer than 3 people (fully 3 quarters of our readership if you count me) have told me they found this page “offensive” or “disgusting” and have called me (ME of all people, if you can believe it!) “an offensive, disgusting asshole” (not a very verbose lot, my readers) . The question is, why? The answer is, who cares. The other question is, will I tone it down? The answer to that, of course, is fuck no. Those people can guzzle cum until their shit looks like an Oreo Blizzard for all I care (see what I did there? Offensive and disgusting, right?). In fact, in honor of all the haters (Finally, haters! I feel like some poor, white bizarro-world version of Jay-Z and it’s awesome!) here are some things that I’ve been chastised for saying in public, that – when given the opportunity to properly explain them – are actually not all that terrible. Or maybe they are. Judge for yourself, just don’t base your response on some knee-jerk reaction of how you think you should feel. Anyway, enjoy!
This first one’s inspired by the Tea Baggers (I’ve actually heard them call themselves that. Is this a political party devoted to putting balls in your mouth? If so…count me in! I mean…nah, fuck it, I know what I said). These folks have diabolically figured out a way to make the most terrifying form of racism - the kind that involves mobs and town squares, not the fairly innocuous whispered, break-room joke kind – socially acceptable, even laudable, depending on where you get your news. The trick, apparently, is to pretend you hate our black, “Muslim” president, not because he’s a black, closeted Muslim, but because you hate TAXES! Duh. Everyone hates taxes. Granted, you didn’t seem to hate taxes a year ago and you’re not paying them to a distant monarch, but it’s easy to see how you’re driven by the same righteous indignation as your namesake band of weirdos. That’s right; bear in mind, the original gangstas put on make-up, tarred and feathered people, dumped some perfectly good English Breakfast into Boston Harbor…they probably weren’t playin’ with a full deck either. Just sayin’. However, they didn’t feel the need to carry muskets into Ye Olde Starbucks, or whatever they called it in colonial Seattle. So what does all this have to do with the Blueneck Offense Fest ’10? Well, I figured as a loving tribute to the Tea Tards, we should all start disguising our racial slurs as anti-big government invective. Por ejemplo, when discussing a neighborhood of ill-repute, you might say, “I wouldn’t rent a place there. It’s gotten pretty socialist in the past few years, if ya know what I mean.” Or, “I went to this bar on the Eastside, but if was filled with people who can’t find their birth certificates if ya follow.” Or even, “That’s the problem with the NBA, too many advocates of universal healthcare, amirite?” You get the point. You can still have the fun of looking over both shoulders and asking that pointed question at the end to ensure that you and your fellow, casual bigots are on the same page, but now there’s added political commentary and secretiveness. You get to get in a dig at Obama, plus the offended parties won’t know what the hell you’re talking about, because…let’s face it, those fist-bumping Sashas and Malias don’t read the paper anyway, ya smellin’ what I’m steppin’ in?
So, hopefully, you see my point – not all that offensive when I actually get to explain the whole thing without being eye-fucked by an entire room of overly-PC hippies. You’d seriously think I suggested that we need some random Asian to math us out of this recession or told that joke about Jews and copper wire. Lighten up, hippies! God, I thought the left was supposed to be the side with a sense of humor. Oh, right…not if it offends anyone. Freedom of fucking speech, ya'll!
This is typical of the sort of infighting and obliviousness that cripples the Democratic party and will lead to the kind of mid-term ass-handing that will effectively cut the one remaining ball off the donkey. We have a black president. To not make jokes about it amounts to a new kind of racism, as nothing about the lives of presidents has ever been off limits before. You think people didn’t make jokes about Taft being a fat-ass or Buchanan being queerer than a three-dollar bill (which was probably an actual unit of currency at the time, but you get the point)? If people knew FDR was in a wheel-chair the cripple jokes would’ve flown like a Timmy-heavy episode of South Park. And no one ever tried to censor South Park! Oh, wait.
Anyway, I won’t go into the various ways in which political correctness is a slippery slope that leads to the worst kind of self-censorship, or how when we seek to avoid offending others, we cease to truly speak for ourselves, or even how the most vile words in the English language draw their power from their ability to offend, and thus the sooner we learn to react to them with a collective shrug of indifference, the sooner they’ll drop out of common usage faster than Beta Max. I’m not gonna go into any of that. What I will do is relate another instance in which being offended took precedence over actually listening.
Barack Obama came to Buffalo last week and was greeted with the usual fanfare reserved for a sitting president – piles of cocaine, blow jobs from every corner of the Asian continent, miniature American flags for all, and, of course, plenty of twirling, twirling, twirling toward freedom. OK, at least two of those things are made up, but it was a big fucking deal, is the point. There’s not a whole lot going on in this city and we’re used to being let down by stylish black dudes.
(He failed to focus on touchdown creation during his first year in office)
The city performed admirably, despite acting a bit like a desperate loser on a first date with a solid 10.
But, of course, Barry had to fall back on every tired cliché in the book in a lame effort to show that he “understands” Buffalo. He began his speech by wiping an imaginary drop of hot sauce from the corner of his mouth. Naturally, the leader of the free world didn’t get on stage in front of thousands of people and a live TV audience of millions with sauce on his face. There’s probably a dude in the Secret Service who only job is wet-nap detail. It was a lame ploy, but the kind of thing he probably does hundreds of times a year. If he had been giving a speech in front of the Catholic Archdiocese, he probably would’ve pretended to have choir boy jizz dripping from his chin. It’s all part of being a politician.
Anyway, I was watching this public nut-stroking at home when a stranger sat down on the barstool next to me. He said something about how he drove past a local chicken wing spot earlier in the day and saw the presidential motorcade parked out front.
“I guess Obama really loves wings,” the said, retardedly.
“Yeah, big surprise,” I replied, assholishly.
From the look on his face, you’d think I’d popped a squat on the bar and took a shit in his beer. Then I realized my mistake. Or, rather, I realized that he was a PC dumb ass. As he slowly backed away from me, as though I’d told him I was crawling with AIDS-infested bed bugs, I realized he thought I would make the same remark if someone told me that Obama took first place in a seed-spitting contest at a watermelon festival. In other words, he thought I was a racist.
If he had given me a moment to explain, I could’ve told him that my mock surprise was not a result of my belief that black people like chicken (though who could blame them? Chicken is fucking delicious), but rather the fact that politicians like free publicity and folksy glad-handing. But that’s how these PC jerk-offs operate. They’re as judgmental, stubborn and close-minded as the racists and homophobes that they’re so vigilant about exposing. They call it a knee-jerk reaction for a reason: it’s made without thought, without even engaging the conscious part of the brain. It’s no exaggeration to say that there’s no way to simultaneously be honest and afraid to offend. There’s no way to have an open dialogue about race and the other issues that divide us as a nation without occasionally rubbing someone the wrong way. So, lighten up knee-jerk-offs. Stop jumping down my throat when I’m not even trying to offend. I have a strong gag reflex.
