Happiness and political ranting.

This is me, doing the tax-return-gift-to-myself dance of joy. I'm gleefully awaiting the arrival of my little digital four track recorder and mics and stands and stuff to get my happy ass recording some shitty demos and stuff. I'm so excited I can barely hold still. Everything should be here by Monday or Tuesday....but I'm greedily hoping it gets here Saturday (possible but not terribly likely). I'm so stoked about the possibility of recording songs, then adding second guitar parts or hand drum tracks or harmony vocals or shakers or any other thing I can think of to play myself....I think it's going to revolutionize the way I write. I'm stoked!!!

Also, I've splurged on a few other little things that make me happy - schmancy coffee, brandy truffles, a book for which I've been impatiently waiting for the paperback release and opted to go ahead and get the hardcover, some girlie-smelly-soaps-and-lotiony things, a new bag...my Taurus self, which has been stifled so much in the past six or seven roommate-less months as I've tightened the belt and ratcheted down the spending, is feeling sated for the first time in a very long time. It's kinda nice. I just hope it can carry me for awhile...it's not like my financial situation looks much like changing for a while.

But I'm going to leave that for worry later and enjoy a good book, truffles, yummy coffee, happy-girlie-ness, and the thought of musical bliss to come. Yay!!

So, I've had a lot of discussions and situations lately where I am personally running into people in my life who are buying into conservative propaganda. Even my intelligent, fairly-well-informed parents have bought a couple loads of bullshit. It makes me sad when I think how many people in this country (let alone the world) aren't anywhere near as informed as my parents.....no wonder the Shrub got re-elected.

I've become an avid anti-fan of Fox News posterchild Bill O'Reilly (see Sweet Jesus, I Hate Bill O'Reilly and the Talking Points Blog), who has lately been fuming about Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor who wrote an essay wherein he compared everyone in this country, and specifically those who worked at the World Trade Center, to a particular member of the Third Reich. Now, is it a tasteful analogy? No. Is it true? Potentially. Is it this guy's right to say what he wants? Yep. Should he lose his job over it? I think that's debatable. Is there anything more inflamatory in his statement than in many conservatives' pervasive derogatory references to various female senators (notably Barbara boxer and, inevitably, Hillary Clinton) as witches? Not to mention that bastion of evangelical bombast - D. James Kennedy - referring to Hitler and his pagan ethics, and how they were to blame for the atrocities of WWII? Yeah, I don't think so.

The point is, the man has a right to say what he wants, and I'm pretty sure it's the Bible (a book folks like O'Reilly and Kennedy and their ilk) that cautions about throwing stones. The sheer hypocrisy of the whole thing makes me want to hurl. You call people witches (without really understanding what that means, and implying that witches, say, eat babies and engage in blood sacrifice), and then get pissed when someone makes a not-completely-crazy comparison (not even an accusation, just a comparison) to a Nazi communications officer.

What's the worst, though, is how many people are enraged about this. They're furious at someone for insulting the memory of those who died on September 11th....and I understand that, I really do. But I still think getting hte full picture before getting upset is a good idea. The full text of the essay in question actually takes a lot of the sting out of the comment. In the author's reply to all the media "backlash," he even states that he includes himself and his family in the comment. And yet, I'm talking to my mother, and she's all pissed off about it, about the fact that he was disrespectful to the dead, yada yada yada. Had she read the essay, or even an unfiltered, non-commentary version of the actual quote? No.

Now, I don't claim to be amazingly well-informed. In fact, when I watch the Sunday morning political shows and see various politicians get grilled on a slew of topics from all over the board, I am amazed at just *how* well-informed these guys are about such diverse subject matter. I don't have time to fill my brain with the stats and quotes and stances these guys pull off the tops of their heads. On the other hand, I do my own research to gather information about as many topics as I can in the political forum, and I don't buy anything at face value - no source is infallible, or at least none that I have yet encountered.

Another story that irks me pretty fiercely is this Kuwaiti student from California claiming he was "attacked and threatened" because he wrote a pro-American essay. Now, this smells like bullshit from the get-go...I can imagine lots of scenarios where a student might get flunked, but writing an essay talking up America isn't one I buy. So, I went and read the essay, and you know what? It blows goats, and reflects *very* poorly on the folks who are championing this barely coherent community college student. I've seen shitty papers before...but this one is possibly the worst - definitely top three. Sentence fragments, improper grammar, ridiculously inserted quotes that do nothing to substantiate his points (not to mention they're not even cited properly), and - worst of all - the point (or what little point you can draw from such a poorly assembled group of partial sentences) doesn't address the alleged topic of the paper. This paper should be embarassing for a middle school student, let alone a college student who's thrust himself in the national eye. I'd be mortified if it was something I'd written.

Meanwhile, many a conservative pundit is screaming bloody murder, claiming that a liberal professor is discriminating against a conservative - and a minority, too! Hell is being raised, this moron is going on talk shows and having news stories written in his honor...and he can barely put together a subject and a predicate. How sad is that? How much common sense does it take to vindicate the professor here, for having the good sense to give a bad grade for a poorly executed assignment? How are all these intelligent, if misguided, conservative politicos missing this point?

I do NOT get it.