Whoa, I like to greet the sun each mornin'
And walk amongst the stars at night
I'd like to know the taste of honey in my life
In my life
Well, I've shared so many pains
And I played so many games
Ah, but everyone finds the right way
Somehow, some way, some day
-- Lionel Richie
I'm lazy. I'm happy.
I've been working my ass off all week, but on the weekend I'm completely lazy and happy. My favorite thing to do is to take my kids off to Pinkberry or Cold Stone or chill with one of my brothers or homies at the Hermosa Beach Pier and drink beers in the sun.
Since I have decommissioned my political agenda, I am close to the point at which I am feeling no pain or guilt about it. And now all of my creative energy comes not from following political current affairs, but reading of big books and a philosophical and spiritual agenda. And I use the first person pronoun a lot. That still bothers me a little. But overall, I am noting at this particular moment, as I attend more closely to the business of running my job and my family, that I am in every way successful, lazy and happy.
I'm waiting for it all to collapse. But it hasn't.
Just yesterday, after chilling with Playa at the above mentioned pier.. hold on. First off while we were on our first beers, we made the acquaintance of a dude from Long Island. I forget the town. He sold his chip business for 50 million (or he had a $50 million revenue chip company, I forget which), and was telling us the glories of cruising on the QE2. Dude's wife was sweet and perky and reminded me that I didn't stand up when introduced. But she understood that while we were all wearing sunglasses in an indoor pub, manners were more or less in park. We therefore removed ours, eyeballed each other and gave smiles of delight. And the conversation reverted to how many bars, restaurants and swimming pools this ocean liner has.
After chilling with Playa, we went to Fry's, and even after 30 minutes of browsing, I realized that there wasn't a thing in the entire store I wanted or needed to buy. And I reflected upon that fact as I stood in the checkout line with a completely unnecessary copy of The Sims 3, for my kids. What's The Sims 3 about, it's about building a house and filling it with stuff and trying to keep your sim happy and fulfilled. I've got about 6 more years of playing house myself, and then I'm done. It will be empty nest time, which means incrementally more time to chill with the Spousal Unit, be lazy and happy. The middle class game is pretty much over for me. I mastered it. Been there, done that. It's temptations no longer tempt me. It's pitfalls have become ordinary. Mastering it is a bit overstated. What's more accurate is that I've developed the habits so that living through it is second nature. I'm easily, lazily middle class, and since I work in a hot industry, I sit on the upper end. Playa and I were trying to remember back the last time we had to live on 60k a year, and it seemed like another era. Neither of us could imagine, without some difficulty, raising a family on what is currently the median income for Americans. We did this from the upper deck of Hennessy's Pub in Hermosa Beach, overlooking the summer sprawl of thousands in bikinis, shorts, leather flip flops and expensive sunglasses. Lazily. Happily.
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I wise man once said that the only way a white man can insult a black man is if the black man gives him permission. So this lazy, happy Sunday morning as I jumped on my other PC I found a bunch of that sort of permission at Jack & Jill Politics. The last time I was on this machine, I must have surfed there. And so looking at the newer stories, I found this. It was basically a diatribe against the purported shamelessness of black Republicans with your standard two dollar guilt-by-association, self-hatred argument about this or that racism in the Right Wing of America. Naturally there was controversy around the topic and this blogger responded. For a moment I thought about jumping into the argument, and in fact I thought about joining Jack & Jill as a group blogger. But actually, I don't care that much. My identity is not that vested. I don't even much pay attention to race outside of the basic notion that people are fundamentally tribal and that it takes skill and incentive to overcome that. But I do know what I know, and I know that the Boxer-Alford fight was a TKO. But, whatever. That was and is obvious. Alford, for what it's worth, did a nice bit of grandstanding himself and outboxed Boxer who clearly can't box her way out of a racial paper bag. She thought all Alford could possibly represent was racial interest politics. (note public commentary here).Hmm. Now that I think about it, I may have met Alford or at least some of his associates from the BCC at a Republican event a couple years ago.
That's essentially the sort of pointless skirmishing that goes on, and yes people get huffy, often for good reason. But never forget that there is a conscious volunteering that goes on. You've got to be ready to play the game. I don't think Alford has to make any excuses for his choice to found the National Black Chamber of Commerce, but it puts him in the odd position of dealing with the Tibbs Threshold. Most people don't know that such a thing as the NBCC exists, and surely more would stumble as Boxer did given just the name. The Tibbs Threshold is named after Mr. Tibbs, the film character portrayed by Sidney Poitier - a man whose dignity and respectability was much higher than people thought it might be. And so they figured they could insult the lesser man, when in fact they just made asses of themselves. Tibbs showed, if I remember correctly, very little anger at the insult, but with its feeble use as a stalling tactic in a more important battle. He was, after all a detective trying to solve a murder. Alford was about the business of mythbusting green jobs, and I imagine that many black Republicans are about the business of the conservative agenda. So getting tripped up and distracted from that business in defending one's personal honor is the risk of being black and giving permission to idiots and racists to insult you from the large catalog of pre-fab racial insults. If you expect to turn your outrage into ammo, then you are playing the game.
Beware.
There's nothing to be gained except for some perverse pride in correcting somebody who is obviously making an error. It might be true that they are an idiot. It may be true that they are an actual racist bigot. It may be true that they are actually culturally retarded. All are opportunities for schooling, but it's not a schooling I for one relish delivering. Nor am I particularly partial to Mr. Tibb's ultradignified approach. Sometimes a can of whoopass is just what needs to be ripped open.
--
On the other side of middle class money, where I've been hanging out for a while, the streets are actually safer. I don't harbor any illusions that Harry Alford is going to go home and cry himself to sleep. Nor are black Republicans likely to bang their heads against any walls because of x, y or z racist. Then again, I can't speak for any of those folks even though I occasionally identify with them and think I know where they're coming from.
This is the No Excuses Era. Permission to speak freely? Permission granted. Permission to insult me? Uh.. Zoom, you need to fly far away from here until your mind can see fresh and clear.
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