Author: Joey deVilla

The Distress of the Privileged (or: “Where’s My Dinner?”)

In an earlier post titled Why Sam is Glad He’s Not Asian, and Why He’s Being Oppressed, I talked about something that blogger Doug Muder calls The Distress of the Privileged. In Muder’s post on the topic, from which I get the express “distress of the privileged”, he cites the scene from Pleasantville in which 1950s TV dad George Parker (played by William H. Macy) comes home to find that dinner isn’t waiting for him:

I’m not bringing this up just to discuss old movies. As the culture evolves, people who benefitted from the old ways invariably see themselves as victims of change.

The world used to fit them like a glove, but it no longer does. Increasingly, they find themselves in unfamiliar situations that feel unfair or even unsafe. Their concerns used to take center stage, but now they must compete with the formerly invisible concerns of others.

…I think it’s worthwhile to spend a minute or two looking at the world from George Parker’s point of view: He’s a good 1950s TV father. He never set out to be the bad guy. He never meant to stifle his wife’s humanity or enforce a dull conformity on his kids. Nobody ever asked him whether the world should be black-and-white; it just was.

George never demanded a privileged role, he just uncritically accepted the role society assigned him and played it to the best of his ability. And now suddenly that society isn’t working for the people he loves, and they’re blaming him.

It seems so unfair. He doesn’t want anybody to be unhappy. He just wants dinner.

Scott Terry, Disenfranchised White Southern Male

Starring the Four New Horsemen of Apocalypse: Propanganda, Stupid, Ayn and Rand.

CPAC is short for Conservative Political Action Conference, and it took place this past weekend in Washington, D.C.. One of the sessions was led by two brothers who are black and call themselves Frederick Douglass Republicans (Frederick Douglass, after escaping from slavery, became a leader of the abolitionist movement and was renowned as a skilled orator) held a session with the name “Trump the Race Card: Are You Sick and Tired of Being Called a Racist and You Know You’re Not One?”. Apparently the old conservative debating technique of yelling out “A racist is just a conservative who’s winning the argument against a liberal!” isn’t working as well as they’d like.

The brothers were there to talk about reaching out to groups recently alienated from the Republican Party, namely women and people of colour, when Scott Terry, one of the 23 members of Towson University’s White Students Union (their purpose is to fight “inherent anti-white bias in academia and mainstream society”) stood up and suggested that this outreach was being done at the expense of young white southern men like himself. The video below shows what happened next:

Terry said “My people are being systematically disenfranchised” and suggested that the Republican Party be more like “Booker T. Washington Republicans” and favour a “separate but equal approach”: “united like the hand, but separate like the fingers”.

In response, the discussion facilitator said that “Booker T. Washington was the second to Frederick Douglass” and that Douglass was the original. He went on to talk about how Douglass was quite conciliatory and even forgave his former slave master, to which Terry replied: “For giving him shelter, and food?”

ThinkProgress reports (any emphasis is mine):

After the exchange, Terry muttered under his breath, “why can’t we just have segregation?” noting the Constitution’s protections for freedom of association.

ThinkProgress spoke with Terry, who sported a Rick Santorum sticker and attended CPAC with a friend who wore a Confederate Flag-emblazoned t-shirt, about his views after the panel. Terry maintained that white people have been “systematically disenfranchised” by federal legislation.

When asked by ThinkProgress if he’d accept a society where African-Americans were permanently subservient to whites, he said “I’d be fine with that.”

He also claimed that African-Americans “should be allowed to vote in Africa,” and that “all the Tea Parties” were concerned with the same racial problems that he was.

At one point, a woman challenged him on the Republican Party’s roots, to which Terry responded, “I didn’t know the legacy of the Republican Party included women correcting men in public.”

He claimed to be a direct descendent of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

The panel continued to be racked in controversy, as an African-American audience member repeatedly challenged the racism on display at this event.

The Hard Part

It is difficult remember that when Scott Terry ignorantly spews such terrible things, he probably didn’t set out to be an asshole. All he wants is his dinner, and he sees that it’s being taken away from him, bit by bit. To him, respect is a loaf of bread, and giving some to people that historically didn’t get any means that he’s losing some of his share.

The challenge for 21st-century North America is going to be reaching out to people like Scott Terry and appealing to their sense of justice and fair play in order to get him to realize that he’s wearing the invisible knapsack.

It’s not going to be easy.

Click the picture to see it at full size.

I’m in Florida all week, visiting my Special Lady. The locals consider the current weather to be chilly, while we visiting Canadians find it rather balmy in comparison to what it’s like back home.

Take a look at these two sad, sympathetic faces. CNN’s Candy Crowley is on the left, and CNN’s Poppy Harlow is on the right:

Did that girl not think of the effects of her getting raped by these two fine young men would have on them?

They’re reporting, quite sympathetically, on the Steubenville, Ohio rape case in which two high school students, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl and in which photos of her naked body, post-rape, were taken and circulated on the internet. The report is chock-full of sympathy and concern for lingering effects on reputation, psychological well-being and future aspirations…for the rapists.

Watch and be amazed. These are two women reporting?

Crowley starts the segment with an interview with Harlow, who covered the story at the scene. Harlow, greatly moved by the plight of two young men whose lives are ruined because they were convicted of raping a girl, says it was “incredibly difficult” to watch the proceedings. “These two young men,” she reports with a look that asks, Is this what our society has come to?, “who had such promising futures — star football players, very good students — literally watched as they believed their life fell apart.”

Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, the two young men whose lives were ruined because they were convicted for, of all things, raping a girl and posting her post-rape photos on the internet. Where’s the justice?

There’s even a human interest angle with Richmond who lives with foster guardians because his alcohol father is unfit to raise him, and how his father, who attended the trial, told Richmond “I love you,” which is something he’s never been heard to say before. Harlow sadly recounts Richmond’s reaction to the verdict: “My life is over; no one is going to want me now”.

“Won’t somebody please think of the rapists?”

Crowley then talks to CNN legal correspondent Paul Callan, asking him about the lasting effects that a rape conviction would have on May and Richmond. “That will haunt them for the rest of their lives,” he replies. There’s no talk of the effect their actions will have on their victim.

For the entire segment, CNN’s focus is on the boys and the effects that this conviction will have on their lives. There is talk of the boys, elliptical references to the crime, but not one mention of — and certainly no concern for — the person upon whom the crime was committed.

Suddenly, this parody news piece by The Onion from two years ago, Athlete Overcomes Rape, in which a star basketball player tries to put the rape he committed behind him, seems downright prescient:

Last night’s incident at Accordion City’s Pearson International Airport is just a facepalm moment, but it could’ve been much, much worse. It started when a Sunwing Airlines maintenance guy stepped out of his van to service a plane but forget that he’d left the engine on and the van in gear. When he finished his work on the plane, he returned to where he’d left the van, only to find that it was gone. In the meantime, the driverless van started to move down the runway, doing a little damage to a Sunwing jet along the way and making its way toward a runway where an Air Canada flight from Edmonton was coming in for a landing.

The pilots of that jet ignored two separate commands from air traffic control to do a “go around”. Their excuse: they thought that those instructions for “someone else”. The plane missed the van — in fact, the crew never saw it — and the van was found in a patch of green past the other side of the runway, its engine still running. I get the feeling that a Sunwing mechanic is going to have to update his resume (and come up with an explanation for his job interviews) very, very soon.

Having lunch before my flight later this afternoon.

I’m sitting in the Red Rocket Diner in Pearson’s Terminal 1 as I write this (I’m on my way to Tampa), and while the near miss is hardly confidence-inspiring, it’s helpful to remember that incidents like this are rare, and when they happen, everyone — flight crews, maintenance teams, air traffic control, investigative workers — agonizes over them, works on ways to prevent such things from happening again, and makes sure that everyone who could possibly involved hears about them. When you look at the odds, the most dangerous part of flying is still the drive to the airport.

Click to see (and download!) their top 100.

Earlier this year, I linked to music blog Said the Gramophone’s picks for the best songs of 2012. If you’re looking for more, here’s another list of top 100 songs from 2012 — this time from Rollo and Grady, a music licensing, management and production company based in Los Angeles. They do a fair bit of music consulting for films and television; if you saw Cedar Rapids or the past three seasons of American Dad, then you’ve heard their work.

If you like psychedelic-ish indie guitar rock along the lines of Tame Impala, Django Django, and Ty Segall, you’re going to love Rollo and Grady’s picks for the best of 2012. I’ve downloaded all the tunes — yup, these are up for free download! — and they’re on high rotation on my iTunes. I’ve put them in a playlist, and I’ve found that they make for get “get stuff done” music at work (your mileage may vary). At the very least, go check out their page, where they’ve set up the songs for download or continuous play with a built-in music player, and accented each song with an interesting image:

Be sure to check out their site’s main page, where they often showcase (and let you download) new music from acts they like. Their latest posts feature music from bands at this year’s South by Southwest conference.

I’m heading to Tampa this afternoon to see The Special Lady…

…attend an annual St. Patrick’s Day-meets-pagan bacchanal…

…and visit some interesting places…

I’m sure it’ll be great fun. Expect posts with photos!