Ladies and gentlemen, it's come to my attention that we homosexuals have finally broken into the hitherto exclusively straight "wide world of sports." Oh what an honor, and a privilege, to know that one openly gay man is possibly entering the locker room as I write, to observe in all candidness the cornucopia of well-sculpted bodies in the nude! It all seems so fresh, so new, like the scent of Irish Spring being wafted on a cloud of steam - it's almost too perfect to be true. And so the Internet tells me today that it is: our breach of the arena walls has not come without its consequences. Haters have arisen on all fronts to throw in their two cents and possibly reverse the coin toss. But let's drop the metaphors for a moment and look hard at what I'm referring to - if you know me at all, it probably isn't what you were thinking.
First, the source: from the Huffington Post. There are many others besides, which can be obtained by a quick Google search. For the most part, they read the same.
In the days after NFL defensive end Michael Sam went public with his predilection for the male physique, a 20-year-old Kent State sophomore was suspended indefinitely from the school's wrestling team for referring to Sam as a "fag" via Twitter. The boy's name, incidentally, is Sam Wheeler (I'll refer to them both by their last names from here on out, to avoid confusion); he made a name for himself at Copley High School, where he won a Division 1 state title his senior year and was also a "first-state all-Ohio" linebacker in football (whatever that means). This is all I was able to find regarding his athletic accomplishments. His crimes against humanity, however, include three tweets subsequent to the first, in which he addresses some unnamed fellow tweeters as "queer" and finally, with an elegant variation on his first slur, seals his fate by referring to them collectively as "fag boys." Having never heard or used this term myself, I have to give Wheeler points there for originality.
Now let's pause a moment for a look at the scoreboard. In the course of this "event," the gay community has suffered - well, to be quite frank, negligable losses at the most. A couple of its members were called "queers" by an athlete via Twitter. Nothing new here. Wheeler, on the other hand, has taken a real beating: his career as a wrestler is very potentially over (and we all know how limited the career possibilities of high-school athletes can be), but to add insult to injury, his name has now been dragged through the public mire for the sake of enciting public outrage (Outrage DC, incidentally, is the monicker of the gay publication that published Wheeler's comments). I'll come back to that point here in a bit, my fellow fag boys.
Back on the playing field, aforementioned Outrage DC brought pressure against Kent State to do something about the "problem." The school's head wrestling coach tapped in to defend the great university against the potential public smears: he claims to have been "surprised [...] by what he read on Twitter." Really, Mr. Andrassy? (if that really is your name...) You were "surprised" to hear the words "queer" and "fag" come from the mouth of a male college athlete? If this kind of language is truly shocking to you, you probably haven't been in the coaching business long enough to deserve your position. But the athletic director Joel Nielsen also stepped up to the plate, claiming that the university considers the comments to be "ignorant" (as though we needed confirmation of the fact), and that Wheeler's suspension "is an educational opportunity for all of our student-athletes." I'm sorry, what? An educational opportunity, you say? I thought you and Mr. Andrassy were just giving lip-service to the LGBTQs. But since you've made the matter an "educational opportunity," I'd like to know what lesson this opportunity is to teach them. As far as I can tell, it's teaching everyone to keep their opinions to themselves; because if they speak them, the consequences will be grave.
Now obviously this is a good lesson to learn: people must be willing to bear the consequences of speaking their mind. I will personally receive a lot of heated Facebook posts as a result of this article (if anyone actually bothers to read it), but I know this and am prepared to endure them for the sake of voicing my opinions. But the more important matter, i.e. the practical consequences of Wheeler's suspension, is as follows: 1.) this will not stop people from disliking gays, and 2.) it will encourage those who do to keep quiet about it.
As regards the first point, it's elementary: you can't change people's tastes by chastising them. Gay-haters exist, and will continue to exist as long as they keep breeding and bringing up their children in that tradition. The majority of the last century showed the rise and widespread implimentation of aversion therapy for the cure of homosexuality; it didn't work, and we gays are fortunately (for me at least) more widespread than ever before. What it did do was teach us to keep our sexuality to ourselves, with devastating psychological consequences - and this is precisely what punishing homophobia will accomplish. I personally do not want to live in a world full of closeted gay-haters. I want to know they hate me before I get back to their apartment, where they keep their hammers, baseball bats and guns.
I seem to be diverging here, so I'll get us back on track by conceding that Wheeler's suspension doesn't in any way represent a legal enfringement of his First Amendment rights. The boy was not emprisoned for his comments, nor was he fined by the state; he was simply dismissed from an athletic institution of which he was necessarily a representative. As a server, I should hope my boss would fire me if I called one of my customers a nigger: bigotry is not the kind of image that anyone wants to promote for their organization.
What is truly upsetting, however, is the manner in which the "progressive" media is gloating over the boy's predicament. The two heads in the Huffington Post video (whose accents and mannerisms betray, if not an outright Uranian disposition, at least a latent inclination to fraternal frotting) are quite unabashedly kicking the man when he's down. Look at yourselves, fag boys. You're self-righteously justifying another person's misery by attributing it to their beliefs. I'd ask you to put yourselves in his shoes - or better yet, try on those of Oscar Wilde, whose exile and ultimate demise was accompanied by no shortage of self-justifying literature commending that very exile and demise. And just as Wilde's detractors before you, you seem to think that these justifications will stop the ideas and dispositions you hate from spreading - and I pause here, to pick up an Oxford edition of Wilde's collected works and rejoice for a moment in his brazen appreciation for nimble-lipped, golden-thighed boys.
As a fag boy myself (I have a feeling I won't tire of using this expression for a good while), I hate to be the one who stands to defend a bigot who probably hates me; but the hypocracy of this "intolerance for intolerance" obliges me to do so. Remember where you come from, fellow man-lovers. Remember the intolerance from which you so recently escaped, and the shame that has only recently been shrugged off your shoulders. Now that you have a voice, a voice specifically gay and specifically tolerated as such, it would be wise not to use it to admonish and condemn others; the public outrage you incite today may very well be incited against you in the months and years to come. And remember, at least, that Sam is the first openly-gay member of the NFL - and that our community has used this occasion to kick a straight man out of sports.
For the moment, it seems that the political pendulum has swung in our favor - we are tolerated more and more every day, and have just been granted access to the locker room - but that does not mean that society will stay on our side. While it is, I suggest you work to build a positive and lasting contribution to the world - because your hate and intolerance will only come back around against you in the next season.
Friday, February 14, 2014
Thursday, February 13, 2014
"Turn the Gays Away" and the Demise of America's Freedom
My Facebook has been blowing up these past few days: apparently the gays are unwittingly under attack again. Every well-groomed, professionally-photographed, bare-chested Facebook friend I have is posting, sharing, and re-posting links that tell the story of yet another outrageous Republican conspiracy to crush our same-sex-loving rights under their cold, heartless bootheels.
"Turn the Gays Away" - this is the term social media have disdainfully applied to SB 2566, a bill introduced by Sen. Mike Bell to the Tennessee State Legislature on Feb. 6, 2014. The news networks claim that the bill will "allow people and businesses to refuse to provide goods and services to homosexuals." Holy fuck. Really? I feel a sit-in (or more appropriately, a "sit-on" - let your imaginations run wild with that one) is in order.
I must admit, I was shocked to hear the news - but I was also a bit skeptical, as I usually and rightfully am when a major media outlet actually manages to shock me. I began reading the pertinent articles and watching the relevant newsreels, something we should all get in the habit of doing more often, and I found that there was a little more to the story than the headlines dared to report. The unfolding of this "little more" (which is actually a "great deal more") requires me to become a little more cerebral than I've allowed myself to be up to this point; I hope my readers will bear with me, or jump ship now if they're not up to the task: I hate it when people disagree with something without understanding it. But I'll come back to that presently.
The summary of SB 2566 can be found at this location: Summary of SB 2566 - read it, and read it well. In fact, read the whole damned bill if you have a knack for legislative jargon, because it spells out quite succinctly, without the enticements of sensationalism, what this bill is all about.
The summary clearly states that the bill's goal is to "permit persons and religious or denominational organizations, based on sincere religious belief, to refuse to provide services or goods in furtherance of a civil union, domestic partnership, or marriage not recognized by the Tennessee Constitution." Let me say that again, in a more literary style: it permits each and every Tennessee citizen to uphold their beliefs in each and every aspect of their private lives - which includes the way in which they conduct their business with others. It is, quite simply, a defense of the First Amendment.
I started laughing when I read this, I must admit; not because of the sheer pretension of a twenty-first century Tennessee senator to presume that he can do anything to defend the constitution, but because of the rather amusing scenario that popped into my head. I imagined two men entering a hardware store in Cannon County - there are three elderly gentlemen besides, probably farmers, wearing overalls and trucker caps and eating boiled peanuts on the porch. Our two men get through the door and, realizing through context clues and general practical wisdom that they've entered an environment that may in fact be hostile to their worldview and way-of-life (the two men are a gay couple, if you hadn't already surmised), they nevertheless act contrary to all prudence and practical wisdom and proclaim to the owner of the shop: "Gooday sir. We two are homosexually in love with one another, and seem to have misplaced our allum wrench, which we purchased, of course, with money from our joint bank account, an account which we have on account of our being, as I said, homosexually in love." They pause for an affectionate kiss, after which: "Could you be so kind as to point us in the direction of a replacement?" The owner of the store, eyeing the couple from under two grey caterpillars on his forehead, spits a spittle of dip and replies: "I don't think we can help you kinda' folks." The shocked couple huffs, exits noisily, and gets furiously back into their jointly-purchased Prius; they easily acquire an allum wrench in nearby progressive Murfreesboro, but decide to sue the offending shopkeeper for discrimination. Old Jedediah (this is the shopkeeper's unfortunate monicker) is forced to hand over the ownership of his shop to the Tractor Supply Company in order to pay the legal fees, but he faithfully returns daily at sunrise, in melancholy and nostalgia, to gnash peanuts on the front porch with his friends.
Ladies and gentlemen, our dear Jedediah - however bigoted and old-fashioned his views on sexuality may be - has done nothing more than inact his right, as sole proprietor of a privately owned business, to sell his wares to whom he likes. And while I've obviously dramaticized here, for the sake of rhetoric and point-making, it does not change the fact that the bill being introduced is designed specifically to uphold an individual's right to conduct his business as he sees fit.
Now it will be pointed out that the bill stipulates as one of the rights it's defending that no individual must "provide employment or employment benefits" to people who offend their deep-seated religious convictions, and on this point I must admit things get a little hairy: the bill is essentially saying that homosexuals may be turned down for a job because of their gayness, which is obviously retarded. But this touches on the other point I raised in my little imaginative exercise, which is this: remember, at all times, where you are. Unless you're Thoreau, and can afford a few years of seclusion and self-sufficiency, you are always going to find yourself in some form of human society; and if that society has a great disdain for buggery, it would be best for a buggerer to keep his private life to himself.
In other words, a potential discriminator can only discriminate if he knows he has something against which he can act discriminately. We homosexuals happen to have an edge here: our predilection for the same sex doesn't visibly manifest itself in our appearance. We can enter a hardware store, a grocery store, a bank or a Taco Bell, and unless we greet the patrons thereof with "Hullo! I'm a homosexual, in need of your services," then we can usually avail ourselves of their services without fear of discrimination. The bill under dispute, when considered in the light of the humdrum and everyday arenas in which discrimination actually takes place, is practically impotent: it cannot encourage nor diminish it. I hate to say it, friends, but no piece of legislation ever will.
And I have to stop here and ask my gays a sincere question: do you honestly want to work for, do business with, or give money to someone who hates the way you love?
But back to the point: what this bill does in fact do (although it shouldn't have to - I oppose it simply on the grounds of its redundancy) is re-establish the constitutional rights of the individual to interact with his society in any benign way that he sees fit - sodomites in particular should be fond of this right's preservation. If there are individuals who truly believe that gays worship the Satan (and I can assure you that there are), this bill means for them that they can refuse to do business with the devil without fear of terrestrial litigation. The bill in no way promotes such refusals - a tolerant and understanding person can't be changed into a bigot by a piece of legislation any more than a heterosexual can be homosexualized by the sight of a gay pride parade. What is at issue here is freedom: the freedom for me to love who I love, and the freedom of others to deal professionally with whom they wish. When it comes down to it, my freedom to pursue butt-sex as an enjoyable pasttime and method of intimacy is no more important than a redneck's freedom to hate faggots. It's just two sides of the flimsy and mottled coin we call modernity.
Now I've been somewhat calm, collected and even flippant up to this point, but I have to stop now and express a real fear I have for our society: this sensationalism in America is getting out of control. There are chasms growing on all fronts, born not from real and profound differences of belief, but from simple misunderstandings - this is just one more chink in the crevasse. Trenches are being dug every day to defend ideologies that haven't been thought through, against opposing ideologies that have only been assumed to exist. Ladies and gentlemen, you're allowing CNN and FOX to define the relationship you have with your next-door neighbors. You're allowing your hatred to be fanned to a fever pitch, a hatred directed against nothing and everything at once - you're losing, day-by-day, your humanity, and you can't get it back by re-posting hyperbolic headlines onto your news feed. But more importantly, you're being pursuaded by P.R. specialists and marketing campaigns to relinquish the freedom that two-and-a-half centuries worth of effort has been spent to establish; and now we come to a generation that can loath and revile a small, quaint, and misguided attempt to save it, by letting a talking head tell us that those attempts are nothing but "evil." You all need to pause, collect yourself, and take a good look at your intentions and the intentions of others (you can start by reading the summary of SB 2566, if you've gotten this far without doing so); you may find out that neither are exactly what they seemed to be.
In any case, I wish all my fellow homosexuals a long and happy same-sex-love-life - I say this, since I know the above-stated opinions will be considered bigoted by not just a few readers. And I send out also my request that, in the unlikely event that this bill does pass, all the patrons of all the places I love to spend my money go on accepting it in return for their services and wares. You only stand to benifit thereby, and so do I.
"Turn the Gays Away" - this is the term social media have disdainfully applied to SB 2566, a bill introduced by Sen. Mike Bell to the Tennessee State Legislature on Feb. 6, 2014. The news networks claim that the bill will "allow people and businesses to refuse to provide goods and services to homosexuals." Holy fuck. Really? I feel a sit-in (or more appropriately, a "sit-on" - let your imaginations run wild with that one) is in order.
I must admit, I was shocked to hear the news - but I was also a bit skeptical, as I usually and rightfully am when a major media outlet actually manages to shock me. I began reading the pertinent articles and watching the relevant newsreels, something we should all get in the habit of doing more often, and I found that there was a little more to the story than the headlines dared to report. The unfolding of this "little more" (which is actually a "great deal more") requires me to become a little more cerebral than I've allowed myself to be up to this point; I hope my readers will bear with me, or jump ship now if they're not up to the task: I hate it when people disagree with something without understanding it. But I'll come back to that presently.
The summary of SB 2566 can be found at this location: Summary of SB 2566 - read it, and read it well. In fact, read the whole damned bill if you have a knack for legislative jargon, because it spells out quite succinctly, without the enticements of sensationalism, what this bill is all about.
The summary clearly states that the bill's goal is to "permit persons and religious or denominational organizations, based on sincere religious belief, to refuse to provide services or goods in furtherance of a civil union, domestic partnership, or marriage not recognized by the Tennessee Constitution." Let me say that again, in a more literary style: it permits each and every Tennessee citizen to uphold their beliefs in each and every aspect of their private lives - which includes the way in which they conduct their business with others. It is, quite simply, a defense of the First Amendment.
I started laughing when I read this, I must admit; not because of the sheer pretension of a twenty-first century Tennessee senator to presume that he can do anything to defend the constitution, but because of the rather amusing scenario that popped into my head. I imagined two men entering a hardware store in Cannon County - there are three elderly gentlemen besides, probably farmers, wearing overalls and trucker caps and eating boiled peanuts on the porch. Our two men get through the door and, realizing through context clues and general practical wisdom that they've entered an environment that may in fact be hostile to their worldview and way-of-life (the two men are a gay couple, if you hadn't already surmised), they nevertheless act contrary to all prudence and practical wisdom and proclaim to the owner of the shop: "Gooday sir. We two are homosexually in love with one another, and seem to have misplaced our allum wrench, which we purchased, of course, with money from our joint bank account, an account which we have on account of our being, as I said, homosexually in love." They pause for an affectionate kiss, after which: "Could you be so kind as to point us in the direction of a replacement?" The owner of the store, eyeing the couple from under two grey caterpillars on his forehead, spits a spittle of dip and replies: "I don't think we can help you kinda' folks." The shocked couple huffs, exits noisily, and gets furiously back into their jointly-purchased Prius; they easily acquire an allum wrench in nearby progressive Murfreesboro, but decide to sue the offending shopkeeper for discrimination. Old Jedediah (this is the shopkeeper's unfortunate monicker) is forced to hand over the ownership of his shop to the Tractor Supply Company in order to pay the legal fees, but he faithfully returns daily at sunrise, in melancholy and nostalgia, to gnash peanuts on the front porch with his friends.
Ladies and gentlemen, our dear Jedediah - however bigoted and old-fashioned his views on sexuality may be - has done nothing more than inact his right, as sole proprietor of a privately owned business, to sell his wares to whom he likes. And while I've obviously dramaticized here, for the sake of rhetoric and point-making, it does not change the fact that the bill being introduced is designed specifically to uphold an individual's right to conduct his business as he sees fit.
Now it will be pointed out that the bill stipulates as one of the rights it's defending that no individual must "provide employment or employment benefits" to people who offend their deep-seated religious convictions, and on this point I must admit things get a little hairy: the bill is essentially saying that homosexuals may be turned down for a job because of their gayness, which is obviously retarded. But this touches on the other point I raised in my little imaginative exercise, which is this: remember, at all times, where you are. Unless you're Thoreau, and can afford a few years of seclusion and self-sufficiency, you are always going to find yourself in some form of human society; and if that society has a great disdain for buggery, it would be best for a buggerer to keep his private life to himself.
In other words, a potential discriminator can only discriminate if he knows he has something against which he can act discriminately. We homosexuals happen to have an edge here: our predilection for the same sex doesn't visibly manifest itself in our appearance. We can enter a hardware store, a grocery store, a bank or a Taco Bell, and unless we greet the patrons thereof with "Hullo! I'm a homosexual, in need of your services," then we can usually avail ourselves of their services without fear of discrimination. The bill under dispute, when considered in the light of the humdrum and everyday arenas in which discrimination actually takes place, is practically impotent: it cannot encourage nor diminish it. I hate to say it, friends, but no piece of legislation ever will.
And I have to stop here and ask my gays a sincere question: do you honestly want to work for, do business with, or give money to someone who hates the way you love?
But back to the point: what this bill does in fact do (although it shouldn't have to - I oppose it simply on the grounds of its redundancy) is re-establish the constitutional rights of the individual to interact with his society in any benign way that he sees fit - sodomites in particular should be fond of this right's preservation. If there are individuals who truly believe that gays worship the Satan (and I can assure you that there are), this bill means for them that they can refuse to do business with the devil without fear of terrestrial litigation. The bill in no way promotes such refusals - a tolerant and understanding person can't be changed into a bigot by a piece of legislation any more than a heterosexual can be homosexualized by the sight of a gay pride parade. What is at issue here is freedom: the freedom for me to love who I love, and the freedom of others to deal professionally with whom they wish. When it comes down to it, my freedom to pursue butt-sex as an enjoyable pasttime and method of intimacy is no more important than a redneck's freedom to hate faggots. It's just two sides of the flimsy and mottled coin we call modernity.
Now I've been somewhat calm, collected and even flippant up to this point, but I have to stop now and express a real fear I have for our society: this sensationalism in America is getting out of control. There are chasms growing on all fronts, born not from real and profound differences of belief, but from simple misunderstandings - this is just one more chink in the crevasse. Trenches are being dug every day to defend ideologies that haven't been thought through, against opposing ideologies that have only been assumed to exist. Ladies and gentlemen, you're allowing CNN and FOX to define the relationship you have with your next-door neighbors. You're allowing your hatred to be fanned to a fever pitch, a hatred directed against nothing and everything at once - you're losing, day-by-day, your humanity, and you can't get it back by re-posting hyperbolic headlines onto your news feed. But more importantly, you're being pursuaded by P.R. specialists and marketing campaigns to relinquish the freedom that two-and-a-half centuries worth of effort has been spent to establish; and now we come to a generation that can loath and revile a small, quaint, and misguided attempt to save it, by letting a talking head tell us that those attempts are nothing but "evil." You all need to pause, collect yourself, and take a good look at your intentions and the intentions of others (you can start by reading the summary of SB 2566, if you've gotten this far without doing so); you may find out that neither are exactly what they seemed to be.
In any case, I wish all my fellow homosexuals a long and happy same-sex-love-life - I say this, since I know the above-stated opinions will be considered bigoted by not just a few readers. And I send out also my request that, in the unlikely event that this bill does pass, all the patrons of all the places I love to spend my money go on accepting it in return for their services and wares. You only stand to benifit thereby, and so do I.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
America isn't a Coke commercial.
American society is quickly losing any real claim to the term "society" (if by that we mean some sort of unity), and American "culture" is rowing happily along in the same boat. It's becoming something weird, friends, and we can't deny it: Miley Cyrus is generating more controversy than the war that still hasn't ended, and a trivial, pathetic advertisement campaign is actually generating concerns about racial predjudice. These things are pop icons, people - they flash up and then fade to gray, much like the emotions we feel when we experience them. The French once described us as "quick to attach and quick to forget" - the accusation has never been more just than now.
There are two (for the sake of simplification and rhetoric) tendancies today in this strange American society we've built. One embraces and espouses the mutilated culture that has grown out of consumerism, and follows it to its terrifyingly logical conclusions - these are the littéraires prétendus that read Nietzsche as a nihilist, because he happened to use the word "nihilism." The other clings hopelessly to the culture that America was able to ferment before the age of mass-upon-mass production, in the hopes that those of us who have any sensibility and refinement will have something to cling onto - something that's been preserved - when the whole shitted mess falls to pieces.
The "quick to attach and quick to forget" are the unfortunate representatives of the very same mass-upon-mass culture that they decry: they've been raised consumers, short-witted, and can't find the time to look into anything else. They alone have time for Ritalin and Xanax, because they don't have time for anything else. They have hours to comb through YouTube, Twitter and Facebook without gleaning anything meaningful therefrom - because they simply don't have time to be bothered by anything-fucking-else. The past, for them, is a wasteland - because they don't have the buttfucking time for it.
The poor souls at the other end of my tidy little dichotomy are equally preoccupied: they've been raised to think that Emerson is sacred, that the constitution is flawless, and that a good story told by a charming, weathered face is all a person really needs or should aspire to. They forget that things are changing, that life is changing, that we're in the growing pains of one of the greatest changes ever to face World Civilization - they forget that information is suddenly everywhere. They forget that cynicism is therefore necessary, if we indeed still aspire for Truth; they forget that the mystery didn't end with their generation; they forget that their children might seem very weird to them.
And so I say to my friends, my contemporaries, my "quick to forgets": WAKE UP, YOU SHITS. There's a whole world lying beneath your feet, one that you've never experienced, one that's completely alien to you - you're standing on the shoulders of giants, and you've yet to even acknowledge their presence. I'll tell you right now, a dramaticized NPR documentary doesn't equate to reading Faulkner, or Hemingway, or Poe; and if you think it does, you're a dick, and we'll all be happily reminded of your existence when it undramatically and quietly ceases.
And to my parents, my parents' friends, and all those who are full of vitriole for the generation at hand: GROW UP, YOU OLD FUCKS. You have the benefit of experience, and you should know that wisdom only comes with it! The more you patronize, the more you alienate the ones you want to convince; the more you insist that you're right, dear Aged, the more you convince the dicks and shitasses of my generation that you're not - because no matter what you think, they are against you. Assume your proper place and learn to advise - but advise with the tact and craft that your age has to you imparted.
There is a time and place, my friends, for responsibility and experimentation. Ours is that time, and ours is that place - for it is never the time or the place to get riled up over a Coca-Cola commercial. So let's get weird - and let's do it responsibly.
There are two (for the sake of simplification and rhetoric) tendancies today in this strange American society we've built. One embraces and espouses the mutilated culture that has grown out of consumerism, and follows it to its terrifyingly logical conclusions - these are the littéraires prétendus that read Nietzsche as a nihilist, because he happened to use the word "nihilism." The other clings hopelessly to the culture that America was able to ferment before the age of mass-upon-mass production, in the hopes that those of us who have any sensibility and refinement will have something to cling onto - something that's been preserved - when the whole shitted mess falls to pieces.
The "quick to attach and quick to forget" are the unfortunate representatives of the very same mass-upon-mass culture that they decry: they've been raised consumers, short-witted, and can't find the time to look into anything else. They alone have time for Ritalin and Xanax, because they don't have time for anything else. They have hours to comb through YouTube, Twitter and Facebook without gleaning anything meaningful therefrom - because they simply don't have time to be bothered by anything-fucking-else. The past, for them, is a wasteland - because they don't have the buttfucking time for it.
The poor souls at the other end of my tidy little dichotomy are equally preoccupied: they've been raised to think that Emerson is sacred, that the constitution is flawless, and that a good story told by a charming, weathered face is all a person really needs or should aspire to. They forget that things are changing, that life is changing, that we're in the growing pains of one of the greatest changes ever to face World Civilization - they forget that information is suddenly everywhere. They forget that cynicism is therefore necessary, if we indeed still aspire for Truth; they forget that the mystery didn't end with their generation; they forget that their children might seem very weird to them.
And so I say to my friends, my contemporaries, my "quick to forgets": WAKE UP, YOU SHITS. There's a whole world lying beneath your feet, one that you've never experienced, one that's completely alien to you - you're standing on the shoulders of giants, and you've yet to even acknowledge their presence. I'll tell you right now, a dramaticized NPR documentary doesn't equate to reading Faulkner, or Hemingway, or Poe; and if you think it does, you're a dick, and we'll all be happily reminded of your existence when it undramatically and quietly ceases.
And to my parents, my parents' friends, and all those who are full of vitriole for the generation at hand: GROW UP, YOU OLD FUCKS. You have the benefit of experience, and you should know that wisdom only comes with it! The more you patronize, the more you alienate the ones you want to convince; the more you insist that you're right, dear Aged, the more you convince the dicks and shitasses of my generation that you're not - because no matter what you think, they are against you. Assume your proper place and learn to advise - but advise with the tact and craft that your age has to you imparted.
There is a time and place, my friends, for responsibility and experimentation. Ours is that time, and ours is that place - for it is never the time or the place to get riled up over a Coca-Cola commercial. So let's get weird - and let's do it responsibly.
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