Arizona Displeases Tube Kitten Again

Okay, just fuck you, like, as a state.

Seriously, just fuck this. I'm done. It's been a whole week of nonstop bullshit, between the Israeli clusterfuck and the weather see-sawing between OMGHELLFIRE and SHUTTHEWINDOWI'MFREEZING, the entire Gulf of Mexico is turning into sludgy quicksand, my neighbor's kids are shouting Black Eyed Peas lyrics in the yard at 8 a.m., people in the world today think "raghead" is a serious thing you should still say, and now fucking THIS. I am done. I am taking this jug of wine, and this bendy straw, and I am going to bed, and I am not coming out until Ceiling Cat has this shit handled.

A fucking mural. That's the hill ignorant pigfuckers have decided to die on today. Every day, another hill for the racists, each one stupider than the last, but you gotta admit this one's a pretty stupid hill. A mural. The very existence of a depiction of a Hispanic kid recycling or whatever is a threat to these people's way of life? Really? I mean, is there a way you can say this so it gets less dumb? And then they literally want to paint over the KID'S FACE TO MAKE HIM LIGHTER SKINNED. And they drive by the mural yelling "nigger" and "spic" at the artists. That's actually what they're doing right now?

I do not get this. I really don't. You know, I get not everybody wanting to live in a United Nations neighborhood for whatever reason (I think it's awesome, but hey, to each his own) or feeling uncomfortable or what have you. I'd be lying if, as a middle-class white girl, I wasn't intimately familiar with the feelings of discomfort that come from confronting societal change. What I aggressively do not get is indulging those feelings to the point ... I mean, it's a MURAL, that's how persecuted you are, that a mural is a bridge too far?

So if they don't paint Hispanic kids conserving the environment, we'll all go back to the good old days when everybody was white and daddy didn't hit us and mommy didn't drink and you were guaranteed a job at the factory until you died and nobody would ever raise your taxes? Because if there's one thing I think the long curving arc of justice has taught us, it's that you can oppress people all you want by making them invisible in art and culture, by making what they see around them empty of their own images. In the long run? It won't work, for the very simple reason that it is stupid, and pointless, and people are stronger than that.

We seem to be in the midst of a very, very, very dumb period in our history, a period in which racist fuckholes pop up every day saying things that leave the rest of us just standing here with our mouths open like, "Did you just say that out loud and then wait for me to praise you for it? Really? In 20fucking10?" And it seems unreasonably glib to say this will end, and we will get better, and no matter how you whitewash the pictures, the truth will out because it always does, but that's the sort of thing I have to believe in order to keep getting up in the morning. Because goddamn, we are a stupid fucking country right now.

A.

Comments

[Southern Beale]

Hah. I just did a post about this and scheduled it to run tomorrow, now that I've read your rant maybe I'll just trash mine.

Here's what I don't get. The City Councilman who created the shit storm about this to begin with has an AM talk radio show. Of course he does. Why is it every racist nutball in the land can get a radio show? Just wondering.

He took to the airwaves to claim "he's not racist" but prominently featuring a brown child (he actually said black but whatever) was a way of asking for controversy. In other words, he went on the radio to create controversy about the mural and his chief complaint is that the mural was painted just to be controversial. WTF? I mean I know local politics can elevate the crazy, trust me we in Nashville have some real lulus, but I'd say this guy is a few sandwiches short of a full picnic.

Anyway, where are all the liberal radio shows? Are we just too busy living our lives and working our jobs and aborting our babies and enjoying buggery and sympathizing with terrorists that we don't have time or what?

[Adrastos]

Great post, A. Just heard that a symbol of American decency and tolerance John Wooden has died. No surprise there he was 99 but he was a good man.

[pansypoo]

butbutbut the gnews says the rest of the states want the same crap.

[Athenae]

He took to the airwaves to claim "he's not racist" but prominently featuring a brown child (he actually said black but whatever) was a way of asking for controversy.

If only those brown people would stop creating controversy by existing in the public view, he could just go on about his day!

EXCUSE ME I'LL BE OFF SOMEWHERE HUFFING PAINT.

A.

[Peter John]

So being black is just a way of asking for controversy?

[Catherine F.]

This story really was the WTF? cherry on the week's shit sundae. I know we have to drag them, kicking and screaming, into the future with the rest of us, but seriously, FUCK THESE PEOPLE.

[Joy]

If you read the comments on the original Arizona Republic's story about this, your mouth would still be hanging open. And yet, the Tea Party/Republicans (they are the same) really think they are going to take back THEIR country! This is one of a few states that I really wouldn't mind if they formed their own country, had to defend themselves from the invasion they all believe will happen, live off their own natural resources, and support their aging population. Give everyone who wants to relocate to saner parts of the country the opportunity and jettison this ignorant blight on the country.

[BlakNo1]

What Joy said. Why do we have to drag these "people" anywhere if they don't want to go? Let them have their own country. They could call it "Pigfuckistan".

[hoppy]

Do you know how hot it gets in Arizona in the summer? Do you know the primary characteristic of Hell? Does that give you a clue? I once almost bought a house in Arizona, but decided to wait until I die.

[ecm]

There are days when I really just want to slap humanity upside the head. GODDAMNSHITMOTHERFUCKINGIGNORANTASSCOCKSUCKERS.

/cathartic profanity

I grew up and still live in Central NJ, and last fall I went back to see the homecoming game at my old (public) high-school to cheer my band-nerd brother. They brought out the homecoming court, which these days really is a cross-section of the school, not just the "popular kids. White, East Asian, South Asian, African-American, Hispanic, you name it. A rainbow, with what I know from experience was very little effort. Beautiful.

So, you know what, you racist hateful bigots? Go Galt like you keep threatening, just go live in the desert in your isolationist all-white communities. And the rest of us will have fun out here with all the awesome people, whatever ethnicity they happen to be.

[mothra]

Well, the good news is that the dick who started all this got fired off of his radio gig. Because he is making Prescott look bad.

FYI: Prescott is definitely a racist town. Worse than Phoenix, if that is possible.

[Southern Beale]

The comment thread here made me laugh and god knows I needed it. Thank you!

[Ted Smith]

Here's what I don't get: the longest residents of Arizona are members of the Navajo, Hopi, Zuni, Apache, Tohono O'Odham and other Native American/First American Tribes, who are rarely mistaken for Swedes. Many more Arizona residents are of a mixed-heritage and even old White people often look like they have been lying in the Sun for far too long. Discriminating against Arizonans based on their skin color seems like an exercise in self-hatred.

[MapleStreet]

"Personally, I think it's pathetic,...You have changed the ambience of that building to excite some kind of diversity power struggle that doesn't exist in Prescott, Arizona. And I'm ashamed of that."

What excuse is there for having them brown skinned Mexicans in Arizona. It isn't like they own the place ! Of course, in the first Iraq invasion under George I, there was a graffiti painted on the Rio Grande Aquifer at El Paso / Juarez that translated that if Iraq has to give back Kuwait ,then when is the US gonna give back Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. Not to mention that the Mexicans who have little Amerind blood are fairly cream colored. The brown comes from having Amerind blood - and isn't like the Amerinds have reason to be in Arizona.

Also, how many folks in the Old South complained that there wasn't a civil rights problem until them agitators started stirring things up. So I suggest that there was before, and with the reactions detailed in the article definitely giving evidence that there definitely is now, very good cause for a diversity struggle.