Ethnic Avenue – The Street That Crosses All the Others

Posts Tagged ‘Republicans’

You know, for a while I thought it was pretty cool how Obama was seasoning the regular, boring-ass presidential handshake with a subtle, and culturally appropriate, sign of humility.

Predictably, the right-wingers got all over this, talking shit about how it was a “sign of weakness” and interpreting it as not-only-literal-bowing, but also a figurative “bowing down” to foreign governments. I, on the other hand, took it as a refreshing change from how our last president handled foreign leaders:

The problem is that Obama keeps doing it. And, now that it’s lost its initial novelty charm, it’s starting to seem—not like a sign of weakness—but like sign of try-hard cultural sensitivity. Everyone has witnessed one of those moments. It’s like that scene in the movies when the idiot brother rehearses for weeks to greet the Greek parents in their native tongue, but instead of saying, “it’s a honor to meet you and your family,” he accidentally says, “your wife looks ripe for the taking.”

All of this bowing is a recipe for disaster. What’s going to happen when Obama goes to shake the Emperor of Japan’s hand again and the Emperor—thinking he’s doing the culturally appropriate thing—slaps Obama’s hand right-quick, forcing a de factor low-five, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air style? Or, what if Hu Jintao busts out with a “whattup brotha’, hollaback at me,” on a White House voicemail message?

But, who knows, maybe that’s Obama’s intention.

You can tell a lot about a person by what kind of shit they choose to stick on their car. Whether it’s a political statement or a stick-figure roll-call of their family members, the car owner is telling you that this thing is sufficiently important to them that they want to advertise it everywhere that car goes.

That’s a bold statement.

But even in the world of bumper stickers and decals, there are classes. Near the top of that list are the semi-enlightened, semi-clever political statements that actually mean something, things like “Can you spare a little social change?” and actually hilarious, semi-original puns. Bands logos, indecipherable country abbreviations, old campaign stickers, and countless miscellany occupy the vast territory of average. Below the fold, you come across the semi-ignorant, but relatively harmless, political statements like “Don’t steal. The Government hates competition.”

Things go South pretty quickly as you work your way down from there. You run into the old, embarrassing 9-11s, like “These colors don’t run,” the generic “Support Our Troops” ribbons, Jesus Christ fish, and other shitty religious conversion attempts. At the very bottom is the boundless universe of the completely idiotic and insane (mostly gun references).

Somewhere in the bottom half of that list, right above “Powered by Deeez Nuutz,” is Calvin (from Calvin & Hobbes fame) peeing on something. Anything. And, if you’ve been on planet Earth over, say, the past 10 years, you know that Calvin has peed on nearly everything, from “La Migra” to the Los Angeles Lakers to—and you knew it was an eventuality—Barack Obama’s head.

But I’m realizing that Calvin is, more times than not, peeing on shit that I like. And, frankly, I’m fuckin’ tired of it. Maybe it all means Calvin is a right-wing, Laker-hating, illegal immigration apologist.

Or, it could mean that he’s just a pawn in this twisted game. Led astray, it’s time to reclaim his-ass and make him pee on shit that actually deserves it.

We’ll start with this one:

A couple of weeks ago, Ethnic Avenue reported on the sudden unshriveling of Obama’s kick-assery, after an extended, disappointing slumber. Since it was only a single week of ballsy, it was unclear at the time whether the whole thing was just a fluke, or the beginning of something big.

Well, the answer to that question has arrived in the form of a major oh-snap moment against his soundly defeated adversary, Old-Man McCain, at the Heathcare Reform Summit last week. In fact, Obama came down so swiftly and coldly, that I actually felt kind of sorry for the old bastard—despite his infinite dickiness and stupidity.

S-N-A-P. The first thing that came to mind after witnessing that massive dose of shut-the-fuck-up is this now-infamous Sean Connery moment (note Barbra Walters’s change of heart in the final seconds).

Whether Obama is having the Sean Connery Realization–that he’s “tried everything else” and that his beatdown is now “merited”–is unclear. But whatever it is, it’s certainly no fluke.

Barack, the Ethnic Smackdown is strong in you.

The Backstory

A few years ago, I had this millionaire, born-again Christian, asshole boss that was so consistently racist (like actually so), that he distorted my uncanny ability to detect racism for several years. He looked like a torn-up version of Lou Dobbs—if you can believe that.

He would say things out of the blue like, “You know, I hired you despite your accent.” Now, I’ll tell you that in subsequent polling, about 80 percent of people say I have no discernable accent. Another, 15 percent or so tell me I have a medley of American city accents. The other 5 percent is this guy. So, when he told me he hired me despite my accent, I figured that was code for, “I hired you despite your being brown,” a semi-obvious fact I appreciated.

It’s nice when people can overlook your flaws.

Over time, I developed a type of Stockholm Syndrome for the guy and our unhealthy relationship blossomed. We’d go to fancy, tax-deducted lunches together to plot out ways to make him even more money. He’d pay every time, and I came to know what a cheap-lunch-whore, entertaining a middle-aged Republican in exchange for the most expensive thing on the menu, must feel like.

Somewhere along the way, the guy got deluded into thinking he was a genius. And to prove his brilliance, he would bait me into conversations about politics. He’d repeat everything he’d heard on Fox News the night before, and I–like the idiot I was at the time–would try disprove him with reason, punctuated with arcane political theory and historical evidence. Definitely not recommended.

In a conversation about racial injustice in our criminal justice system, I pointed out to him that the jails were disproportionately filled with ethnic people.

He came back with, “Well, you’re the ones committing all the crimes.”

He should have been offensive, but he seemed pretty harmless at the time. Besides, the lunches were good.

Why I Told You All of That

Now fast forward to yesterday. I’m reading the news and I run into this story, where a twelve-year-old girl from New York got arrested, and taken away in handcuffs, for doodling on her desk.

Twelve-year-old Alexa Gonzalez scribbled “Lex was here 2/1/10″ on her desk Monday at Junior High School 190 in Queens. She also wrote “I love my friends Abby and Faith.”

The girl says the doodles could have been erased.

I immediately remembered my old boss and thought, you know what, that asshole was right. Lock the little bitch up. We are the ones committing all the crimes.

Every smack that goes up, must come down. And, even though Obama’s hand seems to have floated in the air for like a year, it came down correspondingly hard and crisp across the collective orange face of the Republican party over the past week.

Like so many others, I made no secret of my disgust for Obama’s repeated punk-outs and disappointing overtures to idiots that never had any intention of working with him. But, for at least one magical week, I’m getting to enjoy some good old-fashioned, sweet ethnic beatdown:

What started with a surprisingly in-your-face State of the Union address, has poured over into a daily–semi-abusive–barrage of calling-out, political flourish, and general ridicule. Seemingly overnight, Obama has gone from a bad case of no-balls accommodationism to a life-threatening case of testicular answer.

Now, that’s my kind of change.