This Thanksgiving, I would like to point out that I’m thankful for
Guilty White Liberals.
It’s nice to have a big, fat, hairy example to help you stay on the
path of true open-mindedness and not have to go through life with a
stick up your butt. Guilty White Liberals are everywhere these days,
making excuses for people and chastising those of us who still think Blazing Saddles is hilarious.
For these people, we’ll use the term GWL, which is pronounced like
“jewel,” except with a hard “G.” Wait! That would be “ghoul,” which is
fine with me. How in the world do words spelled j-e-w-e-l and g-h-o-u-l
rhyme, exactly? The English language sucks; we need to bring back
Esperanto.
You know the GWLs. They’re the people who say stupid things like,
“Oh, I don’t see color.” People who say that are either blind or lying.
I get freaked out by the absence of color. I have a recurring
nightmare about being trapped in an all-white room with Nicole
Kidman.
I’ve been a liberal all my life, and I’ve been white even longer
than that. (A little Roe v. Wade humor there.) But I’ve never felt
guilty. I’m not exactly an innocent white liberal; I’m more like “not
guilty” or acquitted, like O.J.
Here’s an example: I once told somebody that his parents were so
rich, their maid was a U.S. citizen. That’s funny, if I do say so
myself. Alas, somebody thought the joke was “racist.”
I pointed out that being a U.S. citizen is a matter of nationality,
not race. Last I checked, people of all different kinds of races are
U.S. citizens. See, the humor of that joke lies in the fact that some
people of means hire as domestic help folks who are in this country
illegally, perchance to pay substandard wages.
(And for those of you who are offended by the use of the word
“illegally,” we’ll just say that like the seagull that finds itself
over the Mojave Desert after a strong Pacific storm, some people find
themselves in a country not of their birth after having been buffeted
about by the cruel winds of economic happenstance and circumstance.
I’ll have to pause here; I feel a tear welling up.)
I was then told that it was obvious that I was talking about
Mexicans. After pointing out to this educated person that Mexican is
also a nationality and not a race (I swear to God that some
people—including some Hispanics—think Mexicans are a
separate race!), I went on to point out that the joke specifically said
that the maid was a U.S. citizen, thereby precluding the possibility
that she could be of any other nationality.
This blurring of races, ethnic groups and nationalities is mostly
sociological and anthropological hoo-hah. Noted American anthropologist
(and the most-unfortunately named) Carleton S. Coon said that there
were five distinct races. Pacific Islanders, Northern Africans/Arabs
and Native Americans may indeed be separate and distinct races, but for
this column, we’ll stick with my assertion that there are exactly 3 1/2
different races—black, Asian, white and whatever Sammy Sosa has
become.
Anyway, I was finally asked, point-blank, what I have against
Mexicans. Fed up, I mentioned that I’ve been married to a “Mexican” for
30 years and that both of my kids are Hispanic, but then added,
sarcastically, that I hate all the rest of them.
It went downhill from there.
The GWLs, emboldened by President Obama’s election, are, in the
words of Richard Pryor, “smelling their piss.” They’re out waggling
their fingers and tsk-tsk-ing people all over the place. ESPN recently
suspended announcer (and also unfortunately named) Bob Griese for a
remark he made on the air. A graphic showing the top five NASCAR racers
was shown, and when asked why NASCAR driver Juan Pablo Montoya was
absent, Griese said that he was “out having a taco.”
At most, that’s a two or three on the logarithmic Richter-like Scale
of Shouldn’t Have Said That. But GWLs gave it a nine. Some even got the
vapors.
I’m sorry, but tacos are a universal food. I’d say that over the
course of a year, I probably eat 100 tacos to every one hamburger. I
wanted to look up the national ratio of consumption of the two foods,
but when I went on Wikipedia, it said that they stopped counting when
comic actor Sinbad died.
Montoya said he was never bothered by the remark and didn’t think
Griese should have been suspended.
The very next week, an NFL announcer got in trouble because he
referred to the fleet-footedness of a running back as
“getting-away-from-the-cops” speed. The running back was black, so out
came the cries of racism.
Really? Only black people run from the cops? When I was a little
kid, we would put a dummy in the street, then laugh as people freaked
out as they drove over it. That’s what passed for interactive
entertainment back in the day. Eventually, the police would show up,
and off we would take. I know exactly what that guy meant. When you’re
running from the cops, that burst of adrenaline is a
godsend—especially for a prepubescent Not Guilty White
Liberal.
This article appears in Nov 26 – Dec 2, 2009.
You said “we need to bring back Esperanto.”
I don’t know where you’ve been but Esperanto never went away.
There are over two million Esperantists in over 120 countries and over 80 countries have national, regional and/or local Esperanto groups.
Vilchjo de Mesao Arizono Usono
esperanto-usa.org is the website,
What is Esperanto? The language everybody speaks.
Who speaks Esperanto? Uhhhhh, nobody?
It’s unfortunate that only a few people know that Esperanto has become a living language.
During a short period of 122 years Esperanto is now in the top 100 languages, out of 6,800 worldwide, according to the CIA World factbook. It is the 22nd most used language in Wikipedia, and a language choice of Google, Skype, Firefox and Facebook.
Native Esperanto speakers, (people who have used the language from birth), include World Chess Champion Susan Polger, Ulrich Brandenberg the new German Ambassador to NATO and Nobel Laureate Daniel Bovet.
Your readers may be interested in the following video. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8…
A glimpse of the language can be seen at http://www.lernu.net
Danehy get your head out your ass! The root thought of these comments are Racist because that is how these racists think! They each could have chosen different analogies but they think with rednecks instead of their brains and these comments blurt from their racist faces.
The Guity White Liberals are not guilty, may or may not be white, and most likely aren’t liberals. They are just merely boringly stupid. Head up and locked.
Enjoyed your column and now I’m having some Thanksgiving turkey,tamales,crawfish etouffee and Indian fry bread. The GWLs can go to hell. They are as annoying as the “religious” wing nuts.
I wish I knew a real liberal. I thought Obama was one, now he is sending more troops to Afghanistan and says he hopes to get out in 2017. During his first term he will probably attack Iran. He and his “liberal” party probably won’t get public option because the final bill will be written by lobbyists for the insurance companies.
So I think what liberals are really guilty about is not really being liberals. At least not liberal enough to withstand the big money interests who run this country.
There is a lot of guilt to go around. As for race, get over it.
Jesse
Thanks Tom, I totally enjoyed this column as for comments 1-4 puhlees trade in your Birkendorks and get a clue…
‘What is Esperanto? The language everybody speaks. Who speaks Esperanto? Uhhhhh, nobody?’
Many more than you might imagine! I speak and write it nearly every day. Check it out for yourself; all you need to do is google it!
Expecting Danehy to recognize a bigoted expression is like expecting a fish to recognize water. When you swim in it all the time, it’s invisible.
Perhaps Danehy (and Jesse himself) should take Jesse’s advice and get over the race thing already themselves.
It appears the words Hypocrisy and Irony aren’t in their dictionary. If you don’t want a discussion to be about race don’t mention it.
Enjoyed the article. Thanks for making me laugh as usual.
Tom is exactly correct on the universality of Mexican food. I have a white relative who vacations on Martha’s Vineyard and swears that you can buy tortillas there. Tom is also correct in stating that “Blazing Saddles” (written mostly by Richard Pryor) is hilarious. I would not, however, consider being locked in a room with Nicole Kidman a “nightmare”.
The most hysterical whiners of the day are the likes of Glenn “the Aryan Semite” Beck and Rush “Oxycontin” Limbaugh who claim racism almost daily…
The only people who speak Esperanto are aficionados, and that’s the way it’s always going to be…sorry. Only languages backed by an actual culture have any real chance of capturing the hearts and minds of a majority of real people. For all intents and purposes, English is already the world language. In the 18th and 19th centuries, French was dominant, in competition with English, which eventually won out (as did the associated empire and its heirs, such as the USA). When Russia was at the peak of its power in the 20th century, Russian was considered a strong contender for a world language competitor. Japanese had a bit of a run in the 1970s and 1980s. Now, the talk is all about Mandarin Chinese. I’ll wager anything, however, that English, and especially the American variety, will continue to be the world language of business and culture for at least the next century or two to come…and probably for millenia after that in some form or another, assuming globalization continues. Yes, they’ll definitely be speaking English in Starfleet….
“I wanted to look up the national ratio of consumption of the two foods, but when I went on Wikipedia, it said that they stopped counting when comic actor Sinbad died.”
Brilliant!
Whatever you say about Esperanto, whether you agree with the idea of the creator or not, whether you think there is a need for esperanto, whether you agree that it is acceptable to have a global superpower with a dominating language (which I do not, but that is irrelevant), firstly, you can’t define Esperanto in a sentence, for it is a language, just as much as any other language is a language, and it does have a culture: the greatest poet to write in esperanto, William Auld, almost won the Nobel Prize for literature. There is also a range of music. I personally know or am in contact with up to fifty people who speak it, which is more people than I know who speak any of the other languages I learn . There definitely are opportunities to speak Esperanto: for example I went to the IJK in the Czech Republic, where I was fully immersed in the language for six days and dreamt in the language for a week.
So, whether you like Esperanto or not, which is entirely subjective, to say that it is dead is an objective, factually incorrect opinion. And, if only languages backed by an actual culture had a chance of becoming a ‘world language’ (whatever that is, and whoever wants that …), then any of the thousands of ‘natural’ languages could be the ‘world language’. Do you actually want a world language? And do you interact with millions of people, or with fewer than a thousand? As one of my friends, whom I met through Esperanto said ‘Se vi volas gajni monon, lernu la anglan: se vi volas amikojn, lernu esperanton’: If you want to earn money, learn English. If you want to have friends, learn Esperanto. Sorry, I didn’t mean to promote the language, only to defend it.
Kion ajn vi diras pri Esperanto, ĉu vi konsentas kun la ideo de ĝi kreinto aŭ ne, ĉu vi opinias, ke Esperanto bezonatas, ĉu vi opinias, ke estas akcepteble, havi mondan superpotencon kun dominanta lingvo (kio laŭ mi, ne estas, sed tio ne gravas), unue ne eblas difini Esperanton ene de frazo, ĉar ĝi estas lingvo, tiom multe kiom ajna alia lingvo estas lingvo, kaj ĝi ja havas kulturon: la plej bonege poeto, skribinta en esperanto, William Auld, preskaŭ gajnis la nobelan premion de la literaturo. Estas ankaŭ multe da muziko. Mi persone konas, aŭ estas en kontakto kun ĝis kvin-dek esperantanoj kaj esperantistoj, kio estas pli multe ol la nombro da kontaktoj en ajna alia lingvo, kiun mi lernas.
Certe estas eblecoj paroli la lingvon. Ezkemple, mi iris al Ĉeĥio por la IJK, kie mi estis en esperanta medio dum ses tagoj: mi fakte sonĝis en esperanto dum semajno.
Do, ĉu vi ŝatas Esperanto aŭ ne, kio dependas de la subjektiva opinio, diri ke ĝi estas morta, neparolata lingvo estas objektiva, kaj fakte malĝusta. Kaj, se nur lingvoj naciaj kun ‘kulturoj’ povintus fariĝi la ‘monda’ lingvo, (kio ajn tio estas, kaj kiu ajn tion volas), ĉu vi fakte volas mondan lingvon? Kaj ĉu vi interagas kun milionoj da homoj, aŭ kun malpli ol mil?
Kiel diris amiko, kiun mi renkontis pere de esperanto : ‘se vi volas gajni monon, lernu anglan: se vi volas havi (ge)amikojn, lernu esperanton.’ Pardonu, mi ne volis varbi la lingvon, nur defendi ĝin 🙂