Been packing all weekend. Well, I shouldn’t say *all* weekend, since I fucked off on Saturday and am, of course, paying for my laziness now.
The closing is Wednesday; the buyer’s coming in for a final walk-through tomorrow morning. Of course, the place is a wreck, and I have to disguise the new chips in the tub finish and vacuum and sweep the mountains of cat hair.
Fortunately, I don’t have to vacate the day of the closing because my attorney wrote in a post-closing occupancy clause. I have seven business days to move out. And I’ll need them, because I don’t yet have a place to go. The real estate agent who was supposed to call me this weekend to look at properties in Astoria never called, and an apparently promising sublet fell apart because I got to the location and found out that the guy had neglected to mention that it was a sixth-floor walkup. Um, no. I’m meeting someone for a four-month sublet in East Harlem Wednesday evening, and I saw a couple of ads for Williamsburg that might work. If worse comes to worst, I’ll just put my stuff in storage and go to a hotel for a bit.
As part of my effort to de-crappify, I’m getting rid of shitloads of books, at least 150. I have to figure out what to do with them; if I can get a used bookstore to take them and give me credit, I’ll be happy. If not, into the laundry room they go.
I really, really need to get myself a library card so I’m not in the position of *having* 150 books to get rid of. Mind you, I’m keeping a bunch, too, but far less than that.
I’m actually kind of glad I haven’t had time to post this weekend, because I’ve almost reached a point, with the ginned-up outrage over Clinton’s RFK comments (see here for something of a mea culpa from Politico; they ran with the story (with a “bellow of excitement,” no less) after Obama’s spokesman gave them the NY Post interpretation of the remarks; after publication, they got hold of the video of the interview and realized that there wasn’t any there there. Of course, by then, the damage was done, and the Obama campaign insured that the Sunday news shows would be all about Clinton’s gaffe and Obama’s maganimous “taking her at her word” business. While, of course, his campaign continued to shop the story around, adding Keith Olbermann’s self-righteous (and un-self-aware) “special comment,” in which he splutters in outrage that Clinton dares mention RFK’s assassination even though she wasn’t talking about Obama but about her own campaign, apparently conveniently forgetting that he advocated for Clinton’s murder or at least beating into submission not one month ago), that I just want to wash my hands of the whole country.
I’ve known for some time that liberal white doodz are pretty damn misogynist (don’t think so? Just ask, for shits ‘n’ giggles, that they stop referring to women they don’t like as “cunts” sometime), but I don’t think I really appreciated the depths of the hatred. At least I *know* the Republicans hate me and aren’t going to advance any causes that are important to me. Liberals, as I discovered, hate me too, but they have enough liberal guilt to pretend that they don’t, and that they care about my issues — and when they’re threatening you with loss of your rights (ROE V. WADE! ROE V. WADE!) if you don’t do what they want, even as they’re offering you absolutely nothing in return other than the status quo, it’s hard not to think that you’d be better off rolling the dice with the Republicans.
I feel your packing pain. Heh. I moved this weekend. Of course there’s still another load of crap at my old apartment, because I ran out time before the movers came and didn’t finish packing everything.
Also, ITA on the scary, scary stuff that Clinton’s campaign has brought to light.
I’ve known for some time that liberal white doodz are pretty damn misogynist (don’t think so? Just ask, for shits ‘n’ giggles, that they stop referring to women they don’t like as “cunts” sometime), but I don’t think I really appreciated the depths of the hatred. At least I *know* the Republicans hate me and aren’t going to advance any causes that are important to me. Liberals, as I discovered, hate me too, but they have enough liberal guilt to pretend that they don’t, and that they care about my issues
I agree that there’s a lot of really ugly sexism and racism that’s bubbled up over the course of the Democratic primary race. Certainly liberal/progressive people are not immune to demonstrating these behaviors and they’re serious issues that needs to be addressed. It takes constant introspection and work, which is not easy, and people don’t do it enough.
That said, I tend to look at these things holistically. Granted, as a white dude myself, I don’t experience sexism or racism the way women and people of color do, and so I need to be aware of that reality and how that skews my perspective. But sometimes I wonder if, in our work to overcome social ills like racism and sexism, we are tempted to slip into a kind of all-or-nothing mode of thought in which we create dichotomies like misogynist/not-misogynist, racist/not-racist, etc. Then when someone who is on the whole liberal engages in a racist or misogynist behavior, this is taken as evidence that this person is “really” one of those -ists.
Let me say before I continue that I am not trying to excuse racist or sexist behavior or say that people should not be confronted when they do these things. I think your example of that word (which I find so vile I don’t even like to type it) and pointing out its misogyny is one way we combat these problems.
People are complicated, and I think attitudes run along a gradient. It’s entirely possible (and, I think, the norm) to hold conflicting views about other people, and to behave progressively in some (even most) instances and not so progressively in others. At what point is someone not-really-liberal instead of being liberal, but flawed?
I suspect the answer has something to do with acknowledging behavior and changing it, but even then, we’re not always successful at doing so.
Well..what are we supposed to conclude from racist and misogynist behavior, except that they’re one of those -ists? Behavior is sort of what defines us. If we constantly try to explain to liberal white doodz that their behavior is wrong and we won’t tolerate it, only to be met with hostility, denial, condescention, indifference, mockery, and screams of oversensitivity and pc and worse, what then? People make mistakes, but clinging to them proudly and clinging to a culture that revels in this sort of behavior doesn’t give me any confidence that they’re on my side. If I could have zuzu’s last paragraph carved on something, I would.
I have a hard time looking at the morass the blogosphere has descended into and thinking that these people are on the whole superprogressive, but they just happen to have the flaw of rabidly hating everyone who isn’t exactly like them, unless we can toe the line and fins a way to become one of the tolerated ones–for now. What are they doing on the positive side that could compensate for the misogyny, classism, and racism they spew on a regular basis? Those aren’t tangential to liberalism, they’re definitive.
(Sorry if I overstepped there, I only discovered this blog recently and am not sure if it’s appropriate for commentors to talk to each other, I understand you were speaking to zuzu and certainly not me.)
Camile, I don’t think you overstepped at all, so no worries there.
If we’re talking about cases in which there’s a consistent pattern of racist/sexist/classist behavior and an unwillingness to take seriously criticism of it, then I agree with you and zuzu. And yes, there are far too many of these cases out in the left-liberal blogosphere. I would (and do) have serious questions about who is on my side and who is not.
I’m talking about more “mixed” cases in which there is discernible support for liberal/progressive causes and issues but also some myopia with respect to, say, sexism. Sometimes I see - or I think I see - a tendency to point to such cases as proof that aha! you’re (generically) not really a progressive and are instead really a racist, sexist, what have you.
I may have misread zuzu’s post and maybe she was talking about the more clear-cut cases you describe. And, perhaps, my point is entirely trivial. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about in recent weeks.
But sometimes I wonder if, in our work to overcome social ills like racism and sexism, we are tempted to slip into a kind of all-or-nothing mode of thought in which we create dichotomies like misogynist/not-misogynist, racist/not-racist, etc. Then when someone who is on the whole liberal engages in a racist or misogynist behavior, this is taken as evidence that this person is “really” one of those -ists.
Here’s the problem: while some of these guys know enough to mouth the right things, i.e., appointing pro-choice judges is important, they haven’t actually *done* a whole hell of a lot in the past 30 years to prevent the chipping away of rights, other than get pro-choice judges appointed when they happen to have a Dem in the White House. And even when they’re in control of Congress, they haven’t done a whole lot to prevent anti-choice judges from being appointed, nor have they managed to push through pro-choice legislation, pay equity legislation, legislation to protect the right of women to receive medication their doctors prescribe, etc.
And now, they’re cheering on misogyny as a campaign tactic, and then getting upset and threatening women with loss of rights if we don’t fall in line without question.
Roe v. Wade has been used so many times as a club to keep women voting for Democrats without offering them anything in return other than the maintenance of the hollowed-out shell of Roe that it’s lost its effectiveness.
Okay, I totally see what you’re getting at there.