Racist or Lit???

One thing I appreciate about middle age and my expatriate status, as well as my refusal to watch TV from anywhere, is a blissful ignorance of the pantheon of American celebrities. I constantly ask myself"Who the f@#$ is this?" when confronted with 'news' about people who look to be about as interesting as they look bright.

Add to that my admitted disdain for the intellectual capacities of many of the people who live below the Mason Dixon Line.

I would swear before a Congressional sub-committee and a series of Senate hearings that "University of Alabama" is an oxymoron of dangerously leviathan proportions.

If someday you turn on CNN and someone has blown up, defecated on, or otherwise caused damage to that irredeemable monstrosity of a confederate (win a war, then you can capitalize it, f@#$face) statue on Stone Mountain in Georgia, all I ask is 4 hours to try and make the airport because it willbe me that did it.

I would hypothesize that many Americans view Southerners like Hong Kongers view Mainlanders; a combination of disdain and gratitude for however much distance you have from them.

Andneither group is right, or to be excused from responsibility for their prejudice. Including me.

Maybe it's just the way I was raised.I mean, my own mother has always used the term "Florida crackers," and considering she lives there and is, uh, white...

I gotta write her an email. The weird part about it for me is that I count many Southerners among my best friends, and there are parts of the South that are breathtakingly beautiful and the people are generally very kind and courteous and warm and welcoming. Many of my Southern friends would acknowledge that the South, like the rest of the US, has a lot to be both proud and ashamed of.

The trick is deciding what goes on which side of that line.

That dividing line is home to many an idea or person.

And it has a Cracker barrel right next to the filling station, too.

Many of America's best writers were Southerners. I know my life wouldn't be as good as it has been without Hunter S. Thompson of Kentucky, or the soothing balm of a chuckle that phrases like "Bust up this chiffarobe" bring to my heart courtesy of Harper Lee.

Then again, Mark Twain was a Yankee, but he wrote some fine books about the South and let me know that white bread is "what the quality eat..."

I will always hold a special place for William Faulkner for the priceless sentence "My mother is a fish."

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I have a sense of ambivalence at times towards the southeast corner of America, and it can oscillate, maybe even vacillate.

Vacillation is not the application of petroleum jelly, but thanks for asking.

Jesus love a goat, where wasI? Oh, yes. Ambivalence...

Remember how much people used to like Britney Spears before she turned into Skankosaurus?

Me either, but you get my point.

At one time she was a Disney-approved cute little Southern girl with a Kevlar hymen. Nowadays, she is to Jerry Springer what Anna Nicole Smith was to Larry King. She's made it all too easy for people to  pass her off as just more Tornado Bait, a fallen Southern belle with rabid bats in the her belfry.

Maybe it just bothers me when people perpetuate stereotypes. The only thing worse than my panoply of crass prejudices is having them validated by someone whose grossly class-less behavior is dwarfed only by her utterly superfluous relationship to anything of any relevance outside MTV.

Sinead O'Connor looked good with a bald head. Britney, on the other hand,  looked like she got shaved at County because she had the crotch crickets.Again .

So when Miley 'Who?' Cyrus of Nashville, TN gets involved in a stupidly racist photo scandal (no, it will never end), it's that much harder for me notto pass her off as what a good friend calls 'East Tennessee trailer trash.'

And Warner'sfrom Nashville.

Now, on one level, you can't blame her; she was born the daughter of a man who has two first names and did more for the mullet than every woman wearing comfortable shoes in Vermont. She's a child star of a former star, so you can imagine she gets more indulgence than discipline. None of this excuses her, but it does remind us that we are not dealing with the average person.

Not to mention that Nashville is... different.

As I chronically remind Warner, 'Nash Vegas,' akaNastyville, ain't reallythe south. It's nothing more than a belt loop of the Southern trousers held up by the Bible Belt. Yeah, it's got a bunch of Waffle Houses, but it doesn't have a NASCAR track. Speaking of Waffle House, what kind of restaurant offers hash brown combinations like "Scattered, Smothered, Covered, Chunked, Topped & Diced" that sound like a to-do list for a serial killer?!? But I say all that to say that it would be too facile and wrong to write this off as something brought about by being born in a region where the loss of a girl's virginity is often accompanied by the exhortation "Slow down, you're crushin' my f@#$in' cigarettes..." or living in a city where misbehavior is damn near a civic obligation.

Besides, none of that is even relevant to my point...

Let's look at exhibit A, the photo: Is the Asian guy trying to make White eyes?First, let's just acknowledge that this is a room full of people who are not shoe-ins to defeat the Special Education Debate Team. There's no pre-Med types in this room.

The guy all the way to the left is apparently Miley's boyfriend. She's on the other side of the hapless Asian guy.

Miley's 16, the boyfriend's 20. Do I hear banjos? Wait, they're not related, so there's no risk of sex.

But neither of them are really of much concern to me. I'll take a $20 bet nowthat she'll be in Playboyin no more than 8 years to try and prolong a fading childhood career.

Speaking of which, what were the odds that the Olson twins would grow up to look a pair of f@#$ing hairless lemurs?!?

Look at the guy all the way on the right. He's what we used to call 'knee-walking, snot-slinging, commode-huggin' drunk.' he's f@#$ed up. And more power to him. Because he can't help but to participate in the racist bullsh*t going on in this photo.

Way back in 1979, Cheech and Chong released a movie called Up In Smoke, a paean to marijuana. At least once, Cheech invites Chong to "get Chinese-eyed." As if he didn't already have them.

Speaking of Tommy Chong, how does that trainwreck of humanity father the gorgeous Rae Dawn Chong?!?

So the guy with the wine glass on the right has taken the high (!) road to racism by at least shouldering some responsibility (and impairment).

He couldn't not make those eyes.

While everyone else may or may not have been doing a Rosie O'Donnell and making offensive verbal jokes (look at the guy in the red shirt), the only thing that the wasted guy's face could say, verbally or non-verbally, is "F@#$, that flash is bright..."

Which likely could not be said of the person thinking it.

Think about it; would you be in a setting where you were drinking wine in a room with Miley Cyrus? Imagine the tenor of that social milieu. The white carpet is not the reason everyone there was more than likely barefoot.Stupid people should be rounded up, killed,  and ground into Soylent Green. I know where there's a room full of them; I've seen a photo.