A Dip in the Gene Pool

Cartoon created by Ima June Pullet (aka TexasTrailerParkTrash)

Dramamine, Anyone?

By Sally Henny Penny

Some folks wear their hearts on their sleeves, their feelings on a t-shirt, or their thoughts on their car bumpers.

Then there is this guy, who says a lot by the flags he chooses to fly on his boat. That one on the left. What is he trying to tell us?




I'm not psychic, but judging from the size of that boat and the gas it requires, I'd put him down as being for deepwater drilling, shallow water drilling, hydraulic fracturing drilling....anything that will keep the gas flowing. Also for loosening environmental regulations, making the Bush tax cuts permanent, cutting social programs, and sending the Tea Party to Congress. That, of course, in addition to being a racist, anti-Semitic symbol to stir the heart of any Klansman.

Just guessin', you understand. Your thoughts?

I think I'm getting seasick.

My Lowcountry

Samuel Henry David Alken

We've lived in the South Carolina Lowcountry for almost twenty years and it still pleases us when the real locals note, "You're not from around here, are you?" Truth is, we'll never be from around here, even if we never get to leave. And that's a prospect we struggle to face. 

In Conway, SC, which is the county seat, they don't ask where you live; they ask where you stay. Even someone born and raised in Horry County (French, "aw-ree"), who has never been farther away than to Georgetown, will tell you they stay in Conway, as if it's entirely temporary and accidental, as if they were telling you what motel they're staying in during their vacation..."We're staying in the Hilton. How about you?"

So that's my deal: I stay here. Because I can't leave yet. I stayed here this long for all those complicated reasons having to do with allowing some precious military brats to make friends and keep them all the way through high school; with having jobs that allowed us to pay for college for those same precious kids; with providing an anchor to parents whose health and mental tethers had grown increasingly slack; and with being as profoundly STUCK as every other homeowner in America right now. As fate would have it, we stay in the Lowcountry.

I have a couple of blog friends, whose work I admire, who have figured out that South Carolina is...shall we say, mean and ignunt? DRINKS BEFORE DINNER author Barry Knister uses the state as a reliable source of blog ridicule at least once every six weeks whether he needs to or not.  I always agree with him because he's clever, a terrific ironist, and he's right about SC. In his latest dead-to-rights (pun intended) salvo, Barry wrote,  "Politicians from South Carolina are all vetted before running. The process is rigorous and wide-ranging. If the person wishing to run for office reveals a capacity for higher-order cognitive functions, he’s 'de-selected.'" I wish I'd said that.

And a new friend, Bill Minnich of Nameless Cynic, has named inbreeding as the likely answer to the "timeless question, 'What the hell is wrong with South Carolina?'" He got some classic comments on his post "Something Could Be Finer" involving space women and interspecies conjugation with pigs.  There was even a comment so objectionable that Bill chose to delete it; I'm sorry I missed that one. In his newest lob at the Lowcountry, he brings up the state sport, bear baiting. Listen, Dear Reader, you'd be hard put to tell me something new about SC, and that's the most discouraging thought I've had in a year unprecedented for discouragement. Bear-baiting. I went looking for an image with which to open this post and had to do us both a favor by choosing a very stylized old painting instead of the photos available at Google Images. As Bill unmincingly notes, South Carolina is f*cked.

So how do we stand it? Well, we don't go out much. And we're very careful how we answer questions about where we "church," which is another way of asking whether we're good, God-fearing, right-wing conservatives or nasty heathen, hippie, socialist, Obama-lovers. Things are very, very black and white in this area. We've always chosen our few friends here carefully and we tend to keep an extremely low profile and well-tended, high boundaries. We read heavily. I have you and, increasingly, so does DH, who has come to think of you as friends he's never met. I even have a remarkable new SC friend, DemWit, in the Up-State, who can snark with the best of the progressives.

Charleston Single House

And we seek out the beauty in favorite spots within an easy half-day's drive. This is a beautiful place largely inhabited by unwelcoming, defensive, insular people who have every reason to feel like the rest of us don't understand them. Forget them with me for a moment. [We'll visit a couple of rice plantations. I am painfully aware of the unforgivable horror and sorrow of slavery when I am there. I walk through the buildings and grounds very quietly, trying to honor the victims, black and even some white, of that unpardonable practice.]

Hampton Plantation

Middleton Plantation

Middleton Plantation 

Middleton Plantation Gardens by Esperanto (wunderground.com)

Charleston Battery Homes

Home Garden, Charleston

Bald Head Point

Bald Head Light

Beaufort Inn, Beaufort, SC

You're welcome. I just bought my copy of Pat Conroy's South of Broad, about the street that divides the historic Charleston Battery from the less lovely parts. Charleston is so unimaginably beautiful, I walk its narrow streets, peering into walled gardens and drooling over the simplest window box, drunk on confederate jasmine and magnolia, and wondering how I could ever imagine living anywhere else. The city intoxicates.


I'm going to curl up after supper with overdrawn and passionate prose about The Holy City and try once more to juggle the impossible cognitive dissonance of life in the Lowcountry.

As Conroy says, "You really can't exaggerate the South."

Dumber, Dumbest, and A Flash of Smarts

I hate it when the dumb gets dumber in my home town. At least someone had the good grace and the intelligence to apologize formally and publicly. [With a big thanks to Belinda, my Meredith buddy, for sending this my way.]

The Greensboro News And Record:

"Sorry For Violation At Constitution Rally

By Tom Green

As the organizer of the Aug. 14. Restore the Constitution Rally in Greensboro’s Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, I give credit for the success of the rally to the National Park Service rangers and the Greensboro police. Their help in managing the traffic and getting all the rally participants in and out of the park made the event run very smoothly. 

The only real incident we had was from the unexpected behavior of one of the guest speakers, Dr. Dan Eichenbaum from Asheville. During Eichenbaum’s speech, he made the mistake of unholstering his sidearm and, while holding it over his head, proclaimed some major point of his speech.

This was a serious mistake, as it was a clearly stated rule for the rally that all sidearms were to remain securely holstered at all times, and the last person I expected to break that rule would be one of the guest speakers, especially one who had been running for a North Carolina congressional seat. You can’t be at a rally protesting others not adhering to the laws of the land, while breaking them yourself.

I know this was his first time speaking at a Restore the Constitution rally and he’s used to speaking at tea party rallies, so maybe it was a combination of excitement and the August heat that made him forget those rules. However, that’s still breaking the rules and his little mistake should have given the park rangers a reason to shut down the rally and tell us all to go home. Since I’m responsible for the actions of the speakers I invited for the rally, I want to publicly apologize for Eichenbaum’s actions to the rangers, the police officers and to the other speakers and those in attendance, from 11 different states, who managed not to break the rules at the rally. 

His actions were definitely not part of what these rallies are about. We’re in the early stages of putting together two more rallies, one in October and another in November, and I’m pretty sure he won’t be speaking at either.

The writer lives in Burlington

From One Penny Sheet

And/Or....We could just give up on states and nations, just let churches be the sovereign entities. Oh, yeah, that's the ticket!

Friday, Sept. 30th, 2010

OPINION

"Let Churches Determine Who Can Bring In Guns

I just read Doug Clark’s piece (Sept. 1) about concealed arms in church and agree with the discomfort felt by some on this issue, but if the church is OK with it, then why should it bother him?

In America, different denominations are allowed to have varied views, and any who do not agree may attend services elsewhere or change policy through their own internal debate.

Statistical evidence of violence invading a church from without is probably as rare as that of terrorists commandeering passenger jets and crashing them into occupied buildings.

Instead of condemning a congregation from without, why not visit and view the church in question from within, thus making an informed judgment?

By the way, sir, I am unaware of any gun shop uncomfortable with patrons who carry a pocket Bible onto their premises.

Jack Little, High Point"

Ya'll, I am so embarrassed for being Southern today, and you know that's just not right. Make a chick feel better, please. Somebody pass the sweet tea.

From Charm of The Carolines

Sarah Palin: No Laughing Matter

Of the Obama administration, she says, “They talk down to us. Especially here in the heartland. Oh, man. They think that, if we were just smart enough, we’d be able to understand their policies. And I so want to tell ’em, and I do tell ’em, Oh, we’re plenty smart, oh yeah—we know what’s goin’ on. And we don’t like what’s goin’ on. And we’re not gonna let them tell us to sit down and shut up.” The crowd’s ample applause at these lines swells to something vastly bigger when Palin vows defiantly that “come November, we’re taking our country back!”

The above lines are from an article by author Michael Joseph Gross for Vanity Fair. Gross followed Sarah Palin "...through through four midwestern states, speaking with whomever I could induce to talk under whatever conditions of anonymity they imposed—political strategists, longtime Palin friends and political associates, hotel staff, shopkeepers and hairstylists, and high-school friends of the Palin children. There’s a long and detailed version of what they had to say, but there’s also a short and simple one: anywhere you peel back the skin of Sarah Palin’s life, a sad and moldering strangeness lies beneath."

I just read Gross' article. It's long, but well worth taking the time to peruse.

A lot of us, myself included, have been guilty of dismissing Sarah Palin. We laugh at her gaffes, marvel at the way that she mangles the English language, and deride her for her lack of knowledge on most topics of substance. But here's the deal, Sarah Palin is a very dangerous woman and if we are to neutralize her, the first thing that we have to do is take her seriously.

While we're making fun of Palin, she's methodically increasing her base, travelling through middle America, trash talking the Obama administration, and regularly invoking the name of Jesus. Her base doesn't think that she's stupid; they think that she's one of them, and when you insult her, you insult them.

I'm guilty of it, as are most progressives. The provincial and narrow view of the world expressed by Palin's followers offends me and I express my distaste by asserting that they are devoid of intellectual curiosity, which is just another way for stating that they're stupid. Once you tell people that they're dumb, they just aren't interested in hearing anything else that you have to say.

However, Palin has successfully tapped into the psyche of a lot of Americans, people who identify with her because they buy her assertions that she is one of them. She makes them feel that their view of the world is valid, that their prejudices and narrow belief systems are superior to those of the heathen liberals. Early on she recognized that Obama represents everything that they fear and dislike. When he speaks, they don't always easily follow what he is talking about so they presume that he's speaking some anti-American, anti-Christian code. Palin feeds their fire; she's their leader.

Perhaps Palin's most clever move is the focus on generating the tent revival atmosphere demonstrated at Beck's Restoring Honor rally. Palin has two texts that she regularly cites at her appearances, the Constitution of the United States and the Christian Bible, sometimes interchangeably. Her audiences eat the mishmash of secular law and religious belief as if it were the mythical manna from heaven, secure in their desire to get their country back and the belief that God wants them to have it.

I don't believe Christianity is inherently evil but I do believe that humankind has repeatedly demonstrated our ability to twist the precepts of any belief system to justify the worst aspects of our nature. Misdirected religious fervor soon swells into fanaticism, and history is littered with the horrors perpetrated in the name of religious fanaticism. These people believe that they're on a mission from God and that Palin is their angel of light guiding them to salvation, not just for themselves, but for the entire country. If they have to trample on the Constitution, run undocumented immigrants out of the country by any means necessary, and kill off the liberals in order to enact their vision and get their country back, then so be it.

The saving grace of this country has been that most people who consider themselves to be Christians have never been overly involved in organized proselytizing. There have always been exceptions, but not any significant numbers involved in forcing the word of God on all, just a few souls wandering through neighborhoods and knocking on doors on occasion. However, the Palin/Beck base are a different and dangerous breed, and they have found their prophets in Palin and her acolyte, Glenn Beck.

They are fueled by their fear and discontent; Palin and Beck provide them with answers that fit their view that they have been wronged and that their entire way of life is danger of being destroyed. Every time they hear someone speaking Spanish they fear that the conversation is about them. They deeply resent being unable to understand the conversation, after all, this is their country. So they angrily question, "Why can't these people learn English?" They also provide the answer, "They don't want to learn English!"

The black man in the oval office further confuses and upsets them. He must be up to something nefarious; he can't really be working for the good of all Americans. At the core of the obsession with so-called reverse racism is a subconscious belief that black people must have some desire for retribution. That belief fuels the vitriolic dislike expressed for President Obama and the obsessive beliefs that he is on the side of the terrorists, has plans to destroy the United States, and plans to chuck the Constitution and replace it with a socialist manifesto.

I vehemently disliked most of the policies of the George W. Bush's administration but I can't recall there ever being an assessment by progressives that GWB was intentionally and with malice aforethought attempting to destroy the country. Certainly, there have been accusations that certain actions on the part of past presidents would result in the destruction of the foundational beliefs of this country but never the assertion that the president in question ran for office for the express purpose of destroying America.

At the top of the progressive agenda must be plans to reframe our message to re-engage liberals and progressives prior to the November 2010 elections and to begin to lay the foundation for the 2012 elections. I'm not confident that there is any framing that will sway those who are enraptured of Palin and Beck, and I fear that the Palin/Beck base will continue to grow.

There is a great deal of apathy among progressives and liberals; declarations that Obama has betrayed us abound. Like a petulant child who didn't get everything on his or her Christmas list, far too many of us focus on what remains undone and look past all that has been accomplished. We threaten not to vote in order to teach the Democrats not to take us for granted.

It's time that we start taking Sarah Palin seriously; her base certainly does. If we don't, there may lessons learned in November 2010 and 2012 but we may the ones who are schooled.