We won the culture war, but they stole all the money

Elvis Presley in King Creole: I don’t want to crawl!

I wrote this in 2004 in the wake of the Gore-Bush election, where we didn’t know who would be president for at least a week or so. I’m pretty much calling for a non-violent civil war. What I left out, which I’ll never be able to ignore again was money. “Follow the money.” Now people are just really angry and really split. The one side’s continued attempt to run the gays out of town and keep their  entertainment clean has been pretty much routed. Can you imagine how freaked out Tipper Gore would have become if you fast forwarded her from the mid-80s to today? Pornography is so infinitely more available and music has become so outright dirty that Prince’s “Darling Nicki” is pretty much children’s programming these days, but these people are still screwing up our evolution.

On the one hand, Ice Cube who once had a hit called Fuck the Police and actually went on to make some children’s movies, and Ice-T who released”Cop Killer has become an actor specializing in playing cops! It seems like there would be blood in the streets if those songs came out today. Whereas the split sort of amused me back in 2000, now it seems much more serious and dangerous. The rich are still conning the angry religious and terribly bigoted into joining with them. Well my side won the culture war by so much that now I’m even somewhat appalled at how decadent and stupid we’ve become.

Meanwhile on the backs of that ignorant, angry base, the rich are executing the biggest cash grab ever. One so big that it seemed impossible to conceive of just a few years ago. Back in the day even John Rockefeller, Randolph Hearst and Howard Hughes would have thought this embarrassingly gauche. After only a year of Donald Trump, it’s like the horrible people we defeated still get to use our car for the next few weeks on our insurance. There is zero regard for what will be left once it is finally over. These insane vandals have stolen sanity on the backs of people who despise education and common sense.

I honestly hope that this is the last backlash to a better future, but there no telling how badly things will be by the time we are able to rebuild from the ashes. The thing I failed to realize back then as I acknowledged the split was the faction that would use it to ransack our piggy banks. I grew up under the greed is good empire of Ronald Reagan, but this is much worse. Bob Dylan warned us about it in “Pawn in the Game”, but that middle class comfortable lifestyle is gone. No one has decided to lay back and enjoy the world around them. It’s all money all the time, but it’s gotten so out of wack that we’re closed to having a master and slave environment back again. Even the people who are making a decent living are usually doing it 80 hours of their week. Kids with huge student loans vying for peasant level jobs. We could have just chilled out and enjoyed the world, but now we work our asses off so someone can buy their fifth yacht. The rest of us will be looking out of our cubicles at all the oil wells lining what were once beautiful coasts. For one second I took my eye off the ball and they stole everything they could grab.

The men at the factory are old and cunning
You don’t owe nothing, so boy get running
It’s the best years of your life they want to steal

-Joe Strummer

At least black people knew when they were slaves; you remain clueless.

-Doug Stanhope

From 2004: Save the Children! It’s time for USA Red and USA Blue!

We seem to be at a major crossroads in this country. Remember when half the country didn’t want to pay for their labor and the other half objected? Wasn’t the last election decided by some guy who blew off voting to go see “Dude Where’s My Car” at the $4.00 theater? Half the country’s blue and half the country’s red. Do we really have to all live together just because the word United is in our title? So George Bush seeing the chasm and wanting to serve us all with his huge mandate figured that we all would be best served with that man of the people, centrist and gentleman John Ashcroft as Attorney General. “Hey, it’s not like he’s my brother,” he whispered and here’s where the line was drawn as Ashcroft ennobled by his new power and importance knew that the most important thing to be done to save the Union was to make sure that he covered up the breasts on the statue that stood behind him when he made his public speeches. Of course half the country applauded while the other half sighed about how the only way they’d ever watch that guy talk was if Pam Anderson was standing topless beside him taking in his every word. Is anyone else scared when a Supreme Court Justice wants to ban television coverage of his speeches on the subject of Freedom of Speech?

 

It’s just that half the people want to enjoy their time on this globe and the other half want to do their best to spoil the party in the vain hope that there is some reward at some time to be considered later. Hopefully, the prigs are all breathing a sigh of relief now that Tommy Chong has spent some time behind bars for encouraging irresponsible glass blowing. So which movie did you go see last weekend? Was it “Dawn of the Dead” which spooked you with its cartoon violence or was it that Aramaic snuff film “The Passion of the Christ” with its worship of ultra-realistic flagellating ennobling suffering? Is it any wonder half the country doesn’t want to party with all those tyrants with the awful record collections, the revelers who find Pin the Tail on the Donkey to be risqué and only for adults?

 

All hell is breaking loose in the suburbs. Sure the lawns are green and the sky is clear. The birds are chirping and mom is out picking the kids up from soccer practice, but who can sleep? Somewhere out there the foundations of the gentile life are being rocked to its pale white core. Men are trying to marry other men! Faded pop stars are trying to reinvigorate their careers by flashing a worldwide audience of millions, and oh yeah Paul Wolfowitz is out making the world safe by adding a 14^th colony with a lot of natural resources.

 

It’s just not fair. Why can’t I be a censor? I like to watch, listen and judge. Does the fact that I don’t particularly want to censor anything really disqualify me outright? Do you have to be the most offended guy er uptight housewife in the world to get that job? Can anyone still Google Orwell without getting arrested?

 

Will you be watching the Friends finale later this year. The Parents Television Council won’t. Well, let me take that back, they’ll be watching but just so they can report to their constituents how offended they are. After all it is in their estimation the 8^th most offensive show on television.

 

“With one season left to go, Friends continues to be one of the raciest sitcoms in prime time, and its early-evening time slot makes it that much more objectionable. All six regulars have been sexually promiscuous, and dialogue has contained vulgar language and explicitly sexual content.  In past episodes, sexual promiscuity, masturbation, Monica’s endorsement of Chandler’s fondness for porn, and Joey’s many sexual partners have served as fodder for jokes.  Last season Rachel gave birth to Ross’s child, the result of a one-night stand.

“In one particularly appalling episode from this season, Monica tries to surprise her husband, Chandler (who is out of town for business) by showing up at his hotel room.  She walks in on him as he is masturbating while watching pornography.  Chandler tries to quickly change the channel so she won’t know what he was doing, and switches it to a shark-attack program, leaving Monica to conclude that he gets aroused by ‘shark porn.’  Far from being disgusted by the idea, Monica later tries to get him in the mood by popping in a tape of ‘shark porn.’”

Admit it, your 10 year old nephew saw that episode and far from objecting to bath time, he now insists on bringing his rubber great white with the gaping wide open mouth of incisors in with him. Is anyone really safe now from “shark porn?” Is anyone really going to want to support our oil supplies in the Middle East once they’ve been exposed to “shark porn?”

Please don’t tell the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that my parents once took me to see The Bad News Bears. After all “Under Michael Ritchie’s direction, the children are cute but used to communicate a cynical, albeit humorous, critique of middle-class values. Profanity, especially from the mouths of children, not exemplary imagemaking. (O)” (Sic).

Have we really survived thirty years since our middle class values were so stridently made fun of by a group of foul mouthed 10 year olds? Oh and that O stands for Morally Offensive, which is as far as the Catholic Bishops are concerned, as bad as it gets. That means that not only should my parents have left me at home they should have stayed there too because hearing Englebert threaten to “stick his bat where the sun don’t shine” is as evil as Pulp Fiction. It’s as evil as Deep Throat. It’s as evil as the Last Temptation of Christ and its “Excessively graphic violence, several sexually explicit scenes and some incidental nudity.”

I don’t pray for the dying soldier in the sands of Fallujah. I pray to my maker that he understands why that Catholic Priest spent so much time taking in offensive material so he could keep his congregation home watching Pat O’Brien movies. Am I the only one who wants to hook up the Catholic Bishops to one of those tests they give to accused pedophiles to see if they get excited down there when Jim Caviezel’s flesh is ripped in efficiently homoerotic fashion from his sweating bony frame? As Bill Hicks once said with amazement and anger “Does my Penis make me a bad boy?”

It’s funny because I’ve never been attracted to another man, which is why I’m happy that The Journal of the Family Research Institute is around to explain it to me. “Please remember that what male homosexuality really involves is getting the penises of other men into their rectums or mouths, or putting their penis into other men’s mouths or rectums … We don’t mean to be ‘gross,’ but it is important to ask yourself ‘how could what a boy’s father did or didn’t do to him make the boy want to do these kinds of sex acts?’ … In late May, 2002, ABC’s Nightline spent a whole week on homosexuality. Over and over again, Ted Koppel argued that homosexuality cannot be chosen, because no one would choose to be rejected, despised, etc. And if no one would choose it, how can anyone argue that homosexuality is anything but either natural (i.e., inborn, genetic, hormonal, etc.) or perhaps a medical or psychiatric abnormality? Well, we can.

“Why do kids become Hari Krishnas? Few wish to befriend or even be around a person who wears yellow robes, shaves his hair, and goes about in a group chanting and ringing bells! Why do people become motorcycle gang members? Few wish to befriend or be around a person who wears leather clothes, sports a beard and long hair, guzzles beer, and wears tattoos.

Indeed, why do people dye their hair blue, wear nose rings, get their belly buttons pierced, or get tattoos at all? If you look around, perhaps 10% or so of the population is ‘different by choice’ (and among adolescents, the percentage is certainly higher).

Why would this be? Doesn’t everyone want to be like everybody else? Not at all.

It can be ‘fun’ to stand out in a crowd. Having the only blue hair in school gives you an identity. You stand out, and with relatively modest effort. You don’t have to be a great athlete or do well academically; you can be talked about and noticed as much as these other kinds of ‘stars.’ You are a star because you have blue hair.

Likewise, you can be someone if you declare yourself to be ‘gay’ — everyone will talk about you. You will have an ‘identity.’

It can be ‘cool’ to attract similar ‘weirdos’ and ‘twist society’s tail.’ Few of us need very many people to like us and stand by us, just a few friends or companions will often ‘do the trick.’ Harris and Klebold, perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre, appeared only to need each other.”

Ah, from penises flying into mouths to mass murder in homeroom in less than 100 words. Can you believe how angry these people were when they found out those two mixed up kids had gone bowling that morning when they could have been grabbing each others ankles on Eric’s mother’s couch?

“No one forces homosexuals to have parades…Anyone who has attended these parades knows that the homosexuals are having fun.” After all everyone knows that marriage shouldn’t be attempted by anyone looking to have fun?

So here’s my solution. All the people who don’t want to have fun out of the pool. We can be fair about this. The nation voted in 2000. Some would say that about half voted for Bush and about half voted for Gore. I say that half voted to have some fun and half voted to grow up Amish. Should we really continue on as if we’re all compatible? Why are we insisting on remaining married when all the spark has flown from our hearts?

The way I see it things are simple and fair. There was once a Superman issue where kryptonite split Clark Kent into Superman Red and Superman Blue. One Clark stayed and married Lois Lane the other ran away to safety in the bottled city of Kandor. Can it be any simpler? It’s time for USA Red and USA Blue. If you wish to live in a red state do so, and my friends and I promise to hang out only in blue territory. None of you really want to live in San Francisco. I promise to stay out of Kansas. Sorry Rodney, “We can’t all get along!” I don’t even want to anymore. Let’s shake hands and call it a day. Goodbye USA Red send as many Bibles to China as you want. You leave us alone and we’ll stay off your grass and stop hitting our balls into your yard.

We’ll listen to the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. Our radio stations will play Howard Stern. We’ll watch the new Tarantino movie. We’ll mourn the death of Joe Strummer. We’ll enjoy Will and Grace during dinnertime. We’ll let men marry men and women marry women. We’ll pursue art and love and poetry and wallow in reflective thought that encourages nothing but weakness and tolerance of all that we don’t see as black and white. We’ll stick to our side of the split Brady bedroom and you stick to yours. We’ll continue to do our best to have a little fun, and you … do whatever it is you do and leave us alone.