Just as it killed journalism (“Dude, I just tweeted the earthquake”), Twitter has expanded its menace to the whole of American Literature.
“TWENTY-SIX MINUTES after last call on August 23, a loud pop sent a wave of jitters through the weekend drunks, bouncers, desperate lonely-hearts and wide-awake cokeheads hanging out on the Avenue A strip between East 12th and 14th streets. Just as they settled back into their cigarettes and drawn-out good-byes, another bang! rocked them”
Growing up means not smashing your TV (even about health care)
The health care debate is perfectly summed up by this image. A black man is threatened with a cop’s taser for standing up to a rent-a-mob of Medicare recipients—while a yellow Revolutionary-era “Don’t Tread on Me” flag is waved triumphantly above his humiliation. The now notorious footage from Brunswick GA features a burly middle-aged man being threatened with violence and arrested for not having a protesting permit. Before he’s hauled away he measures his Tea Party foes aptly. “I am not going to be moved by people who don’t care about other people,” he seethes. He’s forced to the ground as blue haired ladies—and old guys dressed like 1776’ers—laugh and cheer. One of the latter, the local Teabagger’s aptly named spokesman, Larry Lynch, energetically flies the “Don’t Tread on Me” flag. Interviewed by a hack working for an ABC affiliate, Lynch boasts that he is performing his patriotic duty. As the clip winds down the hack intones in a cut-rate Uncle Walt tone: “Tea Party members had wanted a peaceful rally…”
Growing up means not smashing your TV, but when I saw a version of the clip on CNN a couple of weeks ago, I almost launched a coffee cup at the screen. All the greed, ignorance, racism and big lies of the right were unfolding at once. And what kind of local health-care system are the Teabaggers fighting for? On the same day these stormtroopers were grounding their boot into the face of dissent—Georgia Public Radio reported that a Veteran’s Administration clinic promised to Brunswick this year would be delayed until 2012. The region has several army bases so that’s a bigger deal than it seems. So if vets—darlings of the red-blooded—lack basic services in Brunswick, it must be a very ugly picture for the area’s other poor. It’s not even worth accusing conservatives of bad faith and deception anymore. Manipulating the law and a hypocritical, yet pliant, middle-class—while cloaking the deceit in perverted ideals—is the American Way for Republicans.
Even with your hair-trigger finger firmly on the dial, bits and pieces of racist rage are bursting through the car’s speakers: “Socialist plot…” “Indoctrination…” “Protect our kids from that man…” They call the president “that man!” You clench the wheel. It’s not just the talk show hosts who are frothing: the callers—middle class mothers—are furious that Obama deigns to lecture their overweight brats about responsibility. You don’t want to understand them. You speed up. This is not America; this is an apocalypse of sick stupidity. You just want it to end, but there’s nothing you can do except go faster.
Can anyone possibly even imagine what it must be like to be Julia Allison’s broker?
“I told him to be here fifteen minutes ago, and it’s been half an hour, but he’s running on Dominican time, as usual.”
“Her eyes widening beneath heavily shadowed black lids”? [NYPress]
Ummmm. Maybe Matt can start freelancing letters to Penthouse!
Hm. mattharvey nixes the apartment (“room” is better description, I mean, I’m unemployed here) b/c of its basement location, my shrink’s still on vacation, and my parents don’t have the time to deal with that kind of question, so now I don’t know what to do.
(Guess what? I just wrote a Julia Allison-style post.)
