The Elites

Image by Jo Wiggijo from Pixabay

NEWS RELEASE

For immediate dissemination

Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy — The planet Earth Inc. has announced that the battle of the New Millenium is underway. 

On the undercard: Normies vs. LGBTQ+++ 

Main event: Pasty patriarchal hegemonistic Euro-imperialists vs. Womyn and People of Various Hues 

Proudly promoted by the Purple Press: Down in power, but not out, baby!

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"I worked with these liberal elites for 28 years at CBS News, and they were always throwing around the term 'white trash,' by which they meant poor southerners who didn't go to Harvard. I'm not sure why that makes them trash." -Bernard Goldberg

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

The real fight, the elites of America vs. the rest of us, ain't even listed on the undercard. Let me begin by defining some terms and providing a bit of background. 

There was a more or less widely reported news story back in January that lasted about a minute before sinking in the Dizzinformation Ocean.

{I can't imagine why, but then again you're just now writing about this, who's paying you off, Sparky?}

Do you remember the Occupy Wall Street protest of 2011 that lasted for 59 days? Let's send the 1% to the guillotine? 

Till relatively recently I've personally thought that a sub-class of the 1%, people like Bezos, Gates, Cook, Zuckerberg, the Google Gang, and a relative handful of mega-billionaire businessmenpersons — infected with the Woke Mind Virus (WMV) or willing to fake it — were the sort we should all be worried about and keeping an eye on.

{Not to mention no shortage of spoiled progeny, ex-wives, and awokened foundations that have turned on the evil capitalist who started them.}

This is true, Dana, but there are people with money bins bigger than anything Scrooge McDuck could even dream of who have plenty of money and power because of the companies they run and/or control. 

They're not only gazillionaires, they're titans with global reach and the power to shape what information (and propaganda) we have access to and the ability (and willingness) to "disrupt" entire industries for fun and profit.

And here comes AI. 

Big BUT, over the years a new class has evolved, the elites. 

At the behest of an organization called The Committee to Unleash Prosperity, the Rasmussen people conducted a survey that divided respondents into two groups, the general public and the elites. Then they issued a report based on the results. 

Elites are defined as people w/at least one post-graduate degree, who've graduated from a handful of prestigious universities, earn more than 150k a year, and who live in zip codes with more than 10,000 people per square mile.

They also are often either infected with WMV, or at least claim to be, to shield themselves from the rest of us and/or justify/rationalize their power and privilege. 

{That wasn't in the report!}

No, it wasn't, but this was, "In a time when most Americans have suffered a loss of real take-home pay, 74% of elites say they are financially better off today than in the past...." 

You might think that a survey that revealed the opinions and viewpoints of these people would go viral instead of sinking to the bottom of the Dizzinformation Ocean in short order, particularly given the results. 

But these are the people who have control of and/or work for the Un-huh! Nuh-uh! machine (the internet), media of all sorts, academia, Hollywood, woke HR departments, etc.

"While 40% of Americans say their financial situation is worsening, just 20% say it’s improving."

One of the happy side effects of the American experiment was the development of a hooge middle class, our largest population cohort. It's so large we divide it into three sectors: lower-middle, middle-middle, and upper-middle.

The rich, of course, have always punched above their weight. Money = power, but the middle classes traditionally have had plenty of power of their own. 

Many of the rich started out there, or even at the bottom, and retain middle-class common sense and sensibilities. It's still possible for the poor to claw their way up the food chain but it's much harder than it used to be.

Despite the hollowing out of America's industrial base, which used to finance the masses in the middle, there are still plenty of jobs around, at least at the moment. But even the ones that pay relatively decently require too many hours and/or two incomes for everyone in the house to keep their heads above water.

{Well, maybe, but... Wait, who's raising the kids?}

A century or so of slow but steady currency debasement, systemic inflation, and now living off the national credit card is catching up with our republic. 

The average Joe, Joan, or J. Bagadonuts technically lives in the same America as the elites but inhabits a different reality.

The full report is well worth reading, but I know how busy most of you are. Since this is a full-service column, here are some of the highlights of the report listed in its executive summary. 

"Below, we highlight some of the profound attitudinal differences between elites and average Americans:

- Nearly six in ten say there is too much individual freedom in America...

- More than two-thirds (67%) favor rationing of vital energy and food sources to combat the threat of climate change.

- ...70% of the Elites trust the government to 'do the right thing.'

- Two-thirds (67%) say teachers and other educational professionals should decide what children are taught rather than letting parents decide.

- Somewhere between half and two-thirds favor banning things like SUVs, gas stoves, air conditioning, and non-essential air travel to protect the environment.

- About six of ten elites have a favorable opinion of the so-called talking professions — lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, and journalists."

- 81% report never missing one of The Flyoverland Crank's weekly columns. 

{You made that last one up!}

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Snifftoss and the Reluctant Guest

A sort of short short story

Image by tenario1 from Pixabay

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device

"Deep breaths are very helpful at shallow parties." -Barbra Walters  

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),

Your humble correspondent has written a sort of short short story (short, short story? short short-story? a short... never mind). 

The speaker (mentally) executes a sniff and a toss of their head to one side. 

While the guest, technically speaking, can't hear the sniff or see the speaker's hair being tossed with thinly disguised contempt, the speaker's attitude is crystal clear.

The reluctant guest, a reasonably well-adjusted man of a certain age, comfortable with his introverted nature and whose social anxieties have declined in power with each passing year, had made the mistake of initiating the encounter in the first place, 

He was reluctantly attending a social function that he would've much preferred to avoid but there were more reasons to be there there than there were to stay home. Finding himself caught in a situation with the head-tossing dismissive sniffer that required small talk had led to him commenting on a television show currently enjoying quite a bit of favorable notoriety. 

Given that, nowadays idiot boxes are ubiquitous and range in size from square inches to square feet with thousands of entertainment choices on offer if you're willing/able to subscribe to enough content providers...

And that, he was old enough to remember that when there were only a handful of choices (available on a handful of devices that were fairly limited in both size, choice, and functionality) which made it possible to find common ground for discussion...  

He thought, he was on secure ground since even if the speaker thought the show in question was stupid they would have something to discuss. In fact, Snifftoss might even enjoy pointing out exactly why no H. sapin in their right mind would waste their time on such a cultural travesty. 

He thought, he was safe because he rarely watched anything that included commercials and was very picky about what he did watch, which were usually shows offered by one streaming service or another that he thought was of higher quality than the average rubbish on the menu. 

However, being smart enough, and having lived long enough to realize what he thought was a quality show would be considered rubbish by no shortage of other people had taught him to be both cautious and diplomatic about such things. To avoid hurting people's feelings when possible, but to hold his ground when it wasn't. 

Most importantly, he had learned to try and avoid feeding his ego by demonstrating his superiority to anyone, about anything. He had been paying attention long enough to have learned that it was possible to do this accidentally, that many of his fellow H. sapiens psyches, as well as his own, were veritable emotional minefields sown with an easily triggered this or that or even that other thing.

"Well, personally, I find it watchable. And obviously, they dot all the Is and cross all the Ts, but there's just no there, there" said Snifftoss. 

RED ALERT! ALL HANDS ON DECK! SHIELDS UP! MAY THE FORCE BE WITH US!

The guest, instantly grasping that Snifftoss was eager, and would be delighted, to explain themselves politely (but cautiously) replied, "Oh yeah?" 

"People of color? Check."

"LGBT plus? Check." 

"Powerful, non-stereotypical characters presenting as females? Check."

"But what's the point? It's yet another drama that hits all the typical high points that've been around forever. Love, sex, angst, adventure, sex, violence, revenge, God and/or the gods, more sex, occasional humor for a pallet cleanser, good guys v. bad guys, etc, etc, etc."

As I said, what's the point?"

At this point, Snifftoss stops and is obviously waiting for a reply. The guest was still on high alert, but only because he was slightly worried that escaping from this encounter could get ugly. Who was this guy anyway? Crap rolls downhill. What if he was in a position to somehow take it out on the listener's host, a personal friend of the reluctant guest, if he felt he had been slighted?

"Um..., well I suppose it's possible the point is just decent entertainment. In fact, I've wondered about this sort of thing for years. Why do we like stories so much, point or no point, beyond the fact we find a given story to just be a damn good story, well told? 

He was hoping to change the direction of the subject, fearing where he thought Snifftoss was headed, but he wasn't optimistic. 

"I see where you're going," replied Snifftoss, "I guess I'm just jaded. And after all, the postmodernists have freed us from the need for meaning and/or narrative."

The guest swallowed a groan and wondered if it showed on his face. He hoped that Snifftoss would next unknowingly contradict himself and start spinning meanings and/or narratives, which might prove to be interesting.

However, he thought it more likely that he would take the trail to Nihilismberg, oblivious to the fact that this was also a narrative — a dull, dark, boring one with a dead end. Inspiration dawned and he thought he'd try cutting 'em off at the pass and lay a didactic booby trap.   

"I've settled on the notion that all meaningful fiction is a form of distilled reality that contains fundamental lessons each new generation needs to learn, just packaged in a more palatable way than say religion, philosophy, or the like. Not an original idea on my part obviously, but it works for me, and my grandkids confirm it as far as I'm concerned" he replied. 

But I think I've learned all those sorts of lessons, so I don't understand why I still enjoy good stories so much. I must admit I'm also a bit jaded but I'm hoping to live long enough to meet a great-grandkid or two, that'll help get me through to the end. In the meantime, I'm trying to learn how to play the harmonica.

Any thoughts?" 

He smiled and politely waited for a response.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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I Repeat, Let's Invade Mexico

Image by Pandanna Imagen from Pixabay

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device

"Mexico has strict gun control. You cannot own a gun in Mexico." 

                                                                                           -Jesse Ventura 

{Well, technically you can, but...} 

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

I've written before about invading Mexico, setting its more or less enslaved population free, taking out the cartels, and gaining a much smaller and easier-to-control border at the bottom of Mexico. 

I've also written before about sanctioning China in some form or fashion till they stop shipping the precursor drugs to the cartels who use them to manufacture meth and fentanyl and then ship the drugs, enslaved women, a likely terrorist or two, and God knows what all else, across a border everyone knows is out of control, including our alleged president.

And Canada? Canada is a mess. Thinking about suicide? The doctor will see you now. Thinking about protesting Canada's embrace of the reverse quarantine movement (locking down everybody)? Have a problem with crippling the economy and kid's lives by shutting down all the schools?

Better think twice dude, the government may confiscate your money. And be careful what you say online, eh? There's a bill pending called the Online Harms Act. You can find the details here. Hint: Are you familiar with the movie Minority Report? 

I haven't written about invading Canada — it serves as a good example of a bad example (like The Popples Republic of California), it's too damn cold, and at the moment at least the government is no threat to us, just to its own people.

{Fascinating. Um... will you be favoring us with your point at some point?}

Well of course. I always get there eventually, Dana, and in fact, here I am.

We've taken to second-guessing/blowing off allies like Israel and Ukraine to whom we previously made commitments. While we continue to debate, obfuscate, and dissemble, which will keep Mexico and the rest of the world distracted, we could plan the invasion, getting our ducks (tanks) in a row, so to speak.

An invasion will simultaneously make hooge dents in four problems: border control, fentanyl and meth addiction/overdoses, human trafficking, and bloodthirsty cartels.

Win/win/win and win. 

AMLO has finally come clean and declared that the cartels aren't his problem, they're ours, and while he's willing to keep helping us out he could provide much better service  — if the price was right.  

{What's an AMLO?}

He's a who, not a what, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the president of Mexico. A world-class weasel and a pretend populist.

{Lots of that sort of thing going around these days.}

Recently, in a 60 Minutes interview (tick-tick-tick) he laid his cards on the table and unambiguously named his price. 

$20,000,000,000 a year funneled to poor countries in Latin America, lift sanctions on Venezuela and end the Cuban embargo (currently run by a couple of his dicktater buddies), and legalize the millions of Mexicans who have already somehow made it across our buttoned-up Southern border. 

Otherwise, the huddled masses will continue to pour in. Nice little country you got here, it'd be a shame if God knows who was to kick in the back door and have at it.

{That's blackmail! Everybody knows that most of that money would wind up in the pockets of the people who run those countries and who are the reason that...}

I think extortion is a more accurate word, but AMLO says no-no-no, he's just speaking plainly, it's what populist leaders do don'tcha know. As he said, he'll continue to do what he can. After all, Mexico's our biggest trading partner, they make a lot of our stuff there. If we were to close the border prices on all sorts of things would immediately rise dramatically. Nobody wants that, right?

Like China, attempting to drag Mexico into the modern era seemed like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, like gravity, the law of unintended consequences is always in effect.

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) passed in 1994 but I'm not going to come down on one side or the other in that never-ending debate. Suffice it to say the cat's out of the bag/the horse is out of the barn etc. 

Technically speaking, we could've opted to be a more or less self-sufficient country as America is blessed to be one of few countries on the planet Earth that could pull it off, and more or less did till relatively recently.

However, the level of wealth we enjoy and take for granted, unimaginable to my parents (I'm a Boomer), would simply not be possible without trading with the devil(s). But since this column isn't about that, or the fact despite our prosperity many of us are miserable and at each other's throats, I won't bring it up. 

What I will bring up is that in Mexico, a country that has a long history of embracing, how shall I put this...

{Careful!}

Mexico is a country that historically suffers from many of the um... troublesome aspects of some of the countries that are considered part of the "global South."

{Not bad. Have you ever been a corporate/government spokesperson?}

And NAFTA more or less coincided with the rise to power of the infamous cartels that seem to be well on their way to having as much or more power in Mexico as the government. 

AMLO's $20,000,000,000 middlemanperson fee is instructive. Despite NAFTA, the powers that be in Mexico continue to think and act like what used to be called third-world thugs.

{Do we call 'em developing world thugs now?} 

The poor souls fleeing Mexico (and points south) are fleeing economic hardship as much or more than human rights suppression/torture by various and sundry...

{Can't help it, can you?}

Dicktaters. 

Let's make 'em all Americans, crush the cartels, and give some thought to the advantages of being a bit more self-sufficient in a world that includes powerful countries like China (dicktater), Russia (dicktater... who would be just another weenie but for his nukes), et al. 

Once the smoke clears we should give some thought to extending our border to the Panama Canal. Just sayin'... 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Dicktaters

An Emperor's work is never done.

Source Unknown 

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -George Orwell 

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

Consider the plight of the Chinese historians currently writing, rewriting, and then rewriting, and then...well, you can clearly see where this is going even if the scholars involved can't. 

An article in the Wall Street Journal, China Repackages Its History In Support of Xi's National Vision, is where I discovered that Mr. Xi (aka Emperor Poo Win Nie) has taken it upon himself to oversee the current dynasty's fulfillment of a Chinese tradition, writing the history of the previous dynasty.

{Considering how often, relatively speaking, China changes emperors and direction these days, can the current era even be considered a dynasty and what will it be called?} 

You make a good point, Dana. Perhaps it will be called the Mao dynasty in honor of the psychopath who got the whole "socialism with Chinese characteristics" thing rolling... although he had a radically different set of characteristics in mind than the ones currently in fashion. 

Hmmm...I wonder if his corpse is still on display?

{Say what?}

Hang on, I'll be right back...

Oh yeah, Chairman Mao's corpse is still proudly displayed in a custom-made display case that would make your favorite supermarket's meat department proud, and is housed in a custom-made mausoleum. Various and sundry sources...

{The "columnist" favors us, yet again with a various and sundry.}

Harumph. Various and sundry sources on the Uh-huh! Nuh-uh! net (aka the internet, aka the worldwide web of all knowledge)...

{AI's gonna fix that!}

...report that our still well-fed-looking prince of the downtrodden peasantry...

{I wonder if they stuffed him?}

...is still drawing crowds of tourists. Grunge.com has a detail-packed article that includes fascinating tidbits like "...underneath him is a refrigerator. At night, Mao's body is lowered into it."

If you're in the market for a custom-made/designed mausoleum you might find this article at Mausaleums.com (ETERNAL MUASALEUMS™ BY FOREVER LEGACY) useful although ETERNAL MUASALEUMS™ had nothing to do with Chairman Mao's custom-built display case as far as I can tell.

For purposes of giving credit where credit is due, the article was written by Belinda McCleod, "...Belinda has specialized in writing for the funeral industry. Belinda has written for Cake, a funeral-planning website, nursing homes, mausoleum companies, cremation companies, and funeral homes."

The article is accompanied by a hilarious video that I suspect proves that no one from ETERNAL MUASALEUMS™ proofread it, or that someone who works there has a sense of humor.

 

And we're back.  

{I'm impressed, as far as your famous pointless but mildly entertaining meandering digressions go, this may be a personal best.}

Thanks, Dana. Anyways... 

When I first heard about Emperor Poo Win Nie tirelessly taking on yet another task, ensuring that the world understands that what looks like an insatiable appetite for expanding the size of the Middle Kingdom by laying claim to various and sundry countries, islands, and vast swaths of the South China Sea, at least from a barbarian's perspective...

<the writer inhales>

Is actually just China making sure the modern world understands that since they are an ancient country with deep historical roots that's been (often successfully) laying claim to/stealing/or conquering various and sundry countries, islands, and vast swaths of the South China Sea for thousands of years...

There's nothing to see here folks, move along everybody.  

I ordered my research department to look into it and submit a report summarizing the situation via an easily and quickly digestible report.

What landed on my desk not quite three months later, along with an expense report detailing how they had managed to spend $339,933.53 while traveling around the Far East to gather data, was the following report.

The Emperor has personally intervened in a hooge (better than 100 volumes, so far) ongoing, seemingly never-ending project, to write the official history of the previous dynasty, the Qing, which collapsed early in the last century.

It ain't easy to rewrite history to fit modern, often shifting narratives, it's hard out here for a dicktater. As if holding sham elections, having your enemies murdered (semi-plausible deniability route or bring the hammer down?), and inventing rationalizations for conquering your neighbors ain't tough enough. 

Imagine having to make sure that not only the story of the previous dynasty is told in such a way as to justify this, that, or even that other thing but also having to keep an eye on what the minions in the street are saying about the previous 5,000 or so years. 

Now if I was a dick-tater...

{And not just another di...}

I'd steal a half billion or so and get out of Dodge, but I don't think they do it just for the money and the chicks. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down if you wish to share my work or access my golden oldies.   

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News That You Can Use

Pixabay 

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

“Popular culture is a place where...propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing.” 

                                                                                                    -Criss Jami

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

My news you can use file is filling up my hard drive so I've pulled out some of the more interesting stories. 

Wait...what? 

According to Renaissance Recovery (Effective treatment for addiction, founded by people in recovery), who would seem to be in a position to know, "There is...

{Founded by people... Now that's what I call making lemonade when life serves up lemons.} 

"There is a widespread shortage of the prescription medication hydrocodone in the United States, with drug manufacturers failing to provide clear reasons for the scarcity."

{Wait-wait-wait. Are you confessing that...}

No, I'm not, other than Ianazones Peperoni Pizza (ask for lightly baked as they tend to over-bake) my only addiction is current events and I've been unable to find a rehab that treats current events junkies. 

{Then how did...}

Someone that I'm very close to, who comes from a long line of drunks and druggies on both sides of her family, is suffering from Lyme disease that has triggered a cascade of other problems, including severe pain, told me. 

She's terrified of becoming addicted to painkillers and approaches the problem hyper-vigilantly, always careful to take the absolute minimum of her prescribed meds to get relief. 

She mentioned that there are all sorts of opioid painkiller shortages which sometimes results in her and her Docs having to get creative to keep her pain under control. She quite rightly refuses to buy anything "off the street," terrified of getting something laced with fentanyl.

{This makes no sense, I thought...}

So did I. Feel free to go a-googlin (I did) and you'll discover that the DEA, the FDA, and Big Pharma are basically stonewalling the public as to what's going on. The Fedrl Gummit has yet again dropped the public health ball, Big Pharma is afraid of lawsuits, and innocent people are suffering.

{Well, maybe. But the Princess of Wales is using AI or something to tweak family photos! What about that?!?}

N.I.M.B.Y.

According to FoxNews (I know, I know. Thank God for CNN, right? The writer emits an undignified giggle....) there's trouble in the District of Columbia school system. 

"Nearly 6 in 10 of the 500 children at Maury Elementary School are white. At Miner Elementary School, 80% of the kids are black, many of whom are in foster care, receive public assistance or are homeless." (My underlines and I decapitalized Black and White 'cause I'm not nuts.) 

In the name of DEI, D.C. officials want all students to start off at one of the two schools and finish at the other. Problem solved, yes?

No. 

Parents of the kids currently enrolled in one school or the other have gone to the mattresses in opposition to the plan for all of the reasons you can easily imagine. If you should go a-googlin' for details please advise me if you find the answer to two questions I've been unable to discover.

Has the plan been officially approved, or not?

Has anyone suggested using the vast resources of the Fedrl Gummit to resolve the problems at Miner and let the kids remain in their current schools? The knowledge gained could be used to fix problem schools all over America. 

I just thought of a third question. What's the official position of the local teachers union given that teacher's unions are well known nationwide for their expertise and unflagging dedication to educating the nation's young people?

Ban TikTok? What about free speech!

The Emperor never rests when it comes to protecting his flock. According to the Wall Street Journal, there's a citizen of the Middle Kingdom living in Italy who, via X and a website, provides news that's censored in China to over a million people still enslaved there. 

"Now, he is encouraging his China-based followers to drop him, after many of them told him they have been subjected to police questioning."

{Enslaved? That's a bit hyperbolic, don't ya think?}

Ask the Weigers, the Tibetans, millions of 996 employees (someone has got to make the sneakers and iPhones, and...), citizens with bad social credit scores, Hong Kongers, people that... 

{996 employees?}

9 am to 9 pm, six days a week. 

{My old man worked 12 hr. days.}

So that you, or anyone, wouldn't/shouldn't have to. Although... wait, you had a father? How could... never mind.

If you're too busy to follow the link and read the fascinating/horrifying article, one more quote if you please. 

"Li said in an interview that his website and X account have become frequent targets of hacking and cyberattacks and that he has moved four times in the past year for fear of being tracked down by Chinese authorities."

Checked your white privilege lately?

Did you know that marriage promotes white supremacy?

From an article in The College Fix: “I theorize that marriage fundamentalism, like structural racism, is a key structuring element of White heteropatriarchal supremacy,” I'll bet you're wondering what marriage fundamentalism is, right? 

Well, the quote is from Professor Bethany Letiecq, of George Mason University. "...an associate professor in the College of Education and Human Development, specializing in the utilization of community-based participatory action research approaches, anti-racist research methods...and mixed method designs (e.g., qualitative and quantiative methods) in partnership with minoritized and marginalized families."

Benjamin Vogel (a student at Hope College, who wrote the College Fix article) got the marriage fundamentalism quote from a paper published by Dr. Letiecq in The Journal of Marriage and Family with the titillating title: Theorizing White heteropatriarchal supremacy, marriage fundamentalism, and the mechanisms that maintain family inequality.

{Cool, but what's marriage fundamentalism?}

Sorry for the drift, but as a public service... I'm sure that many people are familiar with the phrase "publish or perish," which refers to climbing the occupational ladder to become a full professor with bulletproof tenure and then remain at the top of the academic food chain.  

Big BUT, publish what? Where? Well, often as not it's obscure papers for obscure academic journals that almost no one will ever read. 

Anyways... as to marriage fundamentalism: "I theorize that marriage fundamentalism, like structural racism, is a key structuring element of White heteropatriarchal supremacy. Marriage fundamentalism can be understood as an ideological and cultural phenomenon, where adherents espouse the superiority of the two-parent married family." -Professor Letiecq

I suspect that some of you may be tempted to skip reading Prof. Letiecq's paper but Mr. Vogel's article helpfully supplies us with another quote that explains where Prof. Letiexq is coming from, in his/her/their own words. 

"Letiecq employs 'critical family theorizing…to delineate an overarching orientation to structural oppression and unequal power relations that advantages [white heteropatriarchal nuclear families] and marginalizes others as a function of marriage fundamentalism.'"

{Well who can argue with that?}

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em

 

Image by Evgeni Tcherkasski from Pixabay

This weekly column consists of letters written to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now and haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"At some point or another, everyone has felt unseen and unheard and marginalized." - Ayanna Pressley 

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

I'm a member of a marginalized group.

I went a-googlin' to discover exactly what a marginalized group is having been triggered by the use of the phrase. It happened to turn up in a bunch of articles one recent morning when I was in the midst of my daily relentless need for input.

{Yeah, yeah, we know, you're a current events junkie and...}

In my defense, Dana, I'm very particular about what sort of current events I shoot up, and I'm a wanna-be polymath with wide-ranging interests beyond current events.

{Half-assed polymath... Hey, isn't that a line from a Randy Newman song?}

Perhaps I should settle for renaissance man person and make a point of pronouncing the word as ren-a'-sance. 

{This whole often crossing out man or men shtick and inserting person, not to mention making fun of the pronoun wars by writing he/she/they or the like is getting old.}

As am I, but now that I'm officially declaring myself to be a member of a marginalized group I'll have to give some thought to changing my ways.

According to CultureAlly.com ("Your diversity, equity & inclusion solutions all in one place") "...marginalize refers to the act of treating a person or group as though they are insignificant by isolating and/or disempowering them." 

Having been raised in front of an old school television (think 27" black and white box with tinfoil draped rabbit ears mounted on a cheap stand with two cat hair-clogged plastic wheels for viewing maneuverability) my isolation and disempowerment started early and continues to this day. 

{Huh. Do tell.}

I refer, of course, to heterosexual pasty patriarchs being treated with thinly veiled contempt via that all-American institution, the TV sitcom. 

Anyone of a certain age is aware of the rapid devolution of the wise and patient family patriarch type, think Ward Cleaver or Ozzy Nelson, to the likes of Alan Harper of Two and a Half Men and Al Bundy of Married, With Children, with Archie Bunker of All in the Family bridging the gap. 

For the record, I confess to thoroughly enjoying All in the Family which began in my last year of high school. It was well-written, funny, and cutting-edge for its era. 

But being a relatively clueless callowyute at the time, I never gave any thought to the fact that while Archie's hip, self-righteous son-in-law Michael (aka Meathead) went to class to study sociology, Archie, went to work. 

I went a-googlin' to jog my memories of All in the Family and discovered that I had forgotten that Archie fought in the Second World War. Worse, I had no memory of the fact he had been a young baseball star who dreamed of playing for the Yankees but had dropped out of high school to go to work to support his family during the Great Depression.  

Still, everyone knows the dads of TV Land are (usually) well-meaning dopes... except for evil ones that run hooge global empires that spend all their time ripping off everyone they can, including loved ones.

{What about Cliff Huxtable?}

Moving on...

Despite being told for decades that dads are dopes, I attempted to overcome the damage inflicted on me from being raised in a psychological ghetto in TV Land. I fell in love with, and set my sights on, a blond, girl next door type in my mid-twenties. 

I set out to become, Superhusband! Partying had become boring and my genes were crying out to be reproduced.

I spent nearly three years proving myself worthy and able to make such a thing financially and realistically possible while my love finished college by the skin of her teeth and subsequently informed me that it wasn't me, it was her. 

Later dude. 

{Oh c'mon...}

Seriously. 

"I think there's something wrong with me, I don't think I'm capable of making a commitment," she said.

It would've been nice to know that before spending three years re-enacting the Labors of Hercules.

"I know we promised to be each other's rock, but like, I'm just not up for being anyone's rock right now."

{Oh c'mon...}

Seriously.

To be brutally honest, the previous paragraphs were as far as this column got before I ran out of gas. Not having dropped out of high school to support my family and abandoning my dream of being a professional baseball player (or having fought in a world war) I was feeling like a sissy. 

 

{You're aware Archie Bunker wasn't an actual person... right?}

I definitely don't feel privileged but life and my late wife (born sick, died sick) has taught me that my life could've been way worse, perhaps I should just click on the little trash can icon.

{Uh-oh, do I smell white fragility?}

That's my new deodorant. 

But then I came across this, Thousands of Seniors are still dying of Covid-19. Do we not care anymore? courtesy of CNN.com.

"Prejudice against older adults is nothing new, but 'it feels more intense, more hostile' now than previously, said Karl Pillemer, 69, a professor of psychology and gerontology at Cornell University." 

{I don't understand.}

That one sentence tells ya everything you need to know, you don't have to read the article. Everything in the article is a variation on that one sentence.

{I still don't understand.}

I'm a victim! I'm marginalized! Get Kimberle Crenshaw on the line I need validation! I'm yet another victim of "multiple forms of inequality or disadvantage."  

According to the chicks at Womankind Worldwide, "Intersectionality is the acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and oppression and we must consider everything and anything that can marginalise people – gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, etc."

{Hey, you spelled acknowledgement and...}

You need to stop marginalizing the way folx in the UK spell. 

{I was referring to Womankind, shouldn't that be Womynkind?}

Wait, I'll be right back... Nope, that's how they spelled it.

Cool! I'm officially oppressed and marginalized! Do I get a check? Is there a softball league? An official Facebook page? Hows about reparations? I gotta go... busy, busy!

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down if you wish to share my work or access my golden oldies.   

I post links to my columns (and other stuff) on Facebook so that you can love me, hate me, or lobby to have me publicly flogged.