If You're Rant-y and You Know It...

My apologies for the abrupt break in blog service for the last few days. Mr. Fluff is on his way to a grand adventure, and we all know what that means: pre-adventure shopping. Things to take for self, things to take for others, things to pack both of aforementioned things in, things to anesthetize self with during travel, etc. Whew. It's hard work, preparing for a trip/buying a bunch of crap.

And gee, hasn't the blogosphere been busy logging a load of things to PISS ME OFF while I've been gone. First, there's this story about scary, nauseating anti-Semitism in a Delaware school district (seen first at Bitch, PhD, and then later at Scriveners). Then, there's NY State high court voting down gay marriage. In related news (while not quite as detrimental to my fragile belief in blue-state legislation), my favorite salsa airs an ad equating their competitors' product with pansy, horse-grooming cowboys from New York (link goes to Pam's House Blend). To top it all off, Sony's new ads for the white PSP are all over the internet-- featuring images of a black woman and a white woman in a catfight. (This one really is all over the place, and the comments at each are well-worth reading: check out feministe, reappropriate, pandagon, and it all began at blackademic. The link here is to joystiq because it's rounded up all of the images.)
And I'm not even going to bother with the link to "Comb-Over" Joe Biden and his new CSPAN comments on immigration.

Here's the thing: I got nuthin' to say about this crap that hasn't been said by others by now, who say it better than I could've anyway. [Basically, you could stop reading now, if you wanted.] All I really got is this, after skimming the comments to all of these Kultural Atrocities [KuAt--sort of the sound you make when you retch]: I'm sick of having to watch people articulate beautifully-reasoned, rational, compassionate responses to a Jewish family being run out of DE on a rail, only to get comments defending the rights of Christians. I'm really tired of people having to justify why the PSP ad is racist and feeding off of lesbian cachet. And why can't New York judges man UP? And perhaps most importantly, am I gonna have to make my own mother-biting SALSA now, since I have to cross Pace off the list? Because seriously, Pace, I'm from cowboy country, and now you're freakin' dead to me!

What I'm trying to say (in not particularly articulate fashion) is that I think it's time to develop a culture of negation. The one in which, instead of feeling called upon to explain WHY these things are wrong and HOW they're crimes against humanity (and hell yes, I'm including salsa-deprivation there), we get to say: "NO. NO, it's just clearly anti-Semitic/discriminatory/racist/homo-philic. If you want to argue about it, it's your job to explain to me how it's NOT anti-Semitic, etc. Go on, I dare you. And make it good, because you're going to have to produce EVIDENCE for your claims."

And this culture of negation? Well, it just might be as applicable to say, departmental politics as it is to national politics and advertising. That's all I'm saying.

Here's a blast from the past for you. Just a tip: turn up the sound.