Gut feelings

I recently spotted a local celebrity in the flesh, a woman who is a regular on the local fundamentalist religious TV station. She is something else, and her old-school bouffant hairdo is hard to miss. She was getting food and sitting down for a quick afternoon meal with her family.

The overhead music was playing, and I heard Lou Rawls' old 70s hit, "You'll never find another love like mine"... and just as I passed her, as we both gathered our napkins and silverware, I heard her singing along with Lou, "You're gonna miss my lovinnnnnnn"... and I was momentarily startled. She likes old disco, I thought, surprised. Did I think all the fundies were raised in caves or something? They share the same pop-culture as the rest of us, as separatist as they sometimes are.

As I heard the TV-evangelist sing along with Lou, I was filled with a sudden, unaccountable affection, possibly because I had previously only heard her sing bad gospel songs.

I also realized that being a professional fundie was her job, and it is possible she gets as tired of her job as the rest of us get tired of ours.

I turned and smiled at her, as she was singing the old Lou Rawls song, and she smiled warmly back at me. It was a nice moment.

~*~

My second recent realization is one that I need to chew on awhile... but I will share it with all of you nonetheless. You can help me nail it down, so to speak. To wit:

I live in a very conservative area, and as someone with radical politics and personal style, this means I have to possess a pretty strong personality to go against the grain of the majority.

If someone lives in a very liberal area, and has very conservative politics and personal style, they will also have to possess a strong personality to go against the grain of the majority.

My realization: I may be temperamentally more similar to the minority-conservative-in-liberal-area, than I am similar to the liberals around them. In a majority-liberal area, people can easily take liberalism for granted and don't often get very spirited about it. Thus, the liberals may be lukewarm liberals that in a conservative locale, would be lukewarm conservatives.

When conservatives emigrate to the upstate (and yes, they do, as if there weren't enough of them here already), they are excitable and revved up, like new converts. You can spot them. They take nothing for granted. They have arrived at Ground Zero of Tea Party Central--the Promised Land--and they are raring to go.

They remind me of myself, back in the day, when I got to Berserkley and thought I knew everything.

It's an unnerving realization that I first got whacked with upon reading Eric Hoffer's brilliant book, The True Believer (that all fanatics and extremists are more alike than different). But I never made the connection about geography before, and the concurrent personality types.

In a place where 'everyone' is liberal (Seattle, San Francisco), then an individual's liberalism will mean something very different that it does in a place like upstate South Carolina, where they will try to run you over for having pro-Obama/vegetarian bumper stickers on your car. Thus, the individual's response to political challenges will be very different. There is no need to be defensive when you are in the majority. It is interesting (and telling) to note how this political defensiveness is exhibited. What happens in one place, as standard and typical, would never happen in the other.

Example: During a recent group-conversation, I used the word "evolved." (Correctly, as in, "We evolved to crave fat and carbs"--this may have been, in fact, my exact phrase.) I used the word in a dietary context a number of times, and in each instance, two people in the room corrected my word choice, "created." We were not evolved to crave fat and carbs, we were created that way, by God Almighty. (Well, if we were indeed CREATED that way, why bother to fight it?)

I did not want to start a fight over Darwin at that particular juncture and in that social setting, so I allowed them to correct me, but kept right on using the word, too. And I realized, that kind of shit annoys me, and it's the type of thing that people living in liberal areas don't realize we have to put up with. And the conservatives don't realize it either. (I always wondered what William F Buckley thought of the dopey-fundie brand of right-winger, which he surely knew existed? Or did he believe all conservatives were yacht-club members in good standing?) In the same social situation, would the radical atheist from San Francisco just drop everything and jump in whole hog, and start preaching the Darwin gospel? I only know a couple of radical atheists here in the upstate, and neither behave in this fashion; I think the new arrivals might let a few things slide, the way the rest of us have learned to do.

And how does this influence us and our approach to what we do? Our politics? Our writing? The way we frame the issues?

Can you tell when a blog is written in a conservative or liberal area? How can you tell?

Just some ideas. Discuss amongst yourselves!



~*~


And of course you know I have been earwormed with the damn thing ever since, right?


You'll never find another love like mine - Lou Rawls



~*~

I heard the first two minutes of this old Devo song on the Weather Channel (!) of all places, played over and over during the weekend whilst announcing rain, and now I am earwormed to death with this, too.

And so, it magically becomes our blog post title for today.

Gut Feeling - Devo

The Outing of Senator Lindsey Graham

Though they seem at opposite poles, fanatics of all kinds are actually crowded together at one end. It is the fanatic and the moderate who are poles apart and never meet. The fanatics of various hues eye each other with suspicion and are ready to fly at each other's throat. But they are neighbors and almost of one family. They hate each other with the hatred of brothers. They are as far apart and close together as Saul and Paul. And it is easier for a fanatic Communist to be converted to fascism, chauvinism, or Catholicism than to be a sober liberal.

--Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

In this edition of DEAD AIR, we see that right-wing fanatics have attacked a moderate, although they are ostensibly on the same side politically. But as Eric Hoffer instructed us, the fanatic hates the moderate far more than he hates the fanatic who opposes him.

~*~


I haven't written about all of this yet, because I didn't know exactly what to say.

Certainly, I knew the day would come. I have written on the subject--admittedly mincing my words, dropping vague hints and otherwise hedging my bets. I wasn't eager to be sued. Now, I see that I could have written anything I wanted, and Senator Graham would have ignored me, as he is currently ignoring the extended media-foofaraw over his alleged homosexuality. I am currently kicking myself for not going whole hog, while at the same time, I worry about the vendetta being carried out by the nasty tea partiers.

(sigh)

I should have known, after Graham faced them down during last October's town hall meeting, that their last resort would be outing. South Carolina Democrats and liberals have been rightly fearful that another Strom Thurmond waits in the wings (and believe me, there are a parcel of em) to take Graham's seat. Although we heartily disagree with him on plenty of issues, we know how much worse it could be, and how much worse it certainly has been. (We also like having a moderate Republican in the senate, knowing he comes from the Upstate.)

I should have realized, it would be the far right, not the far left, that outed him. For one thing, the left doesn't really care what he does in the sack, we care about his politics. The major grudge GLBT activists have against him is that he has voted strictly anti-gay since his swearing in. This is truly galling, and the reason GLBT activists like Michelangelo Signorile are after him.

And so, here we are, at the moment of truth. What will Lindsey Graham do?

My advice to him is to continue ignoring this homophobic hoopla as long as possible. Any day now, he will be asked point-blank by the press. It's time for him to haul out that legendary charm, and WORK IT.

And while he's doing that, he can stop voting against his own people. Quietly and without fanfare. Just do it. Start withdrawing support from homophobic legislation, homophobic Republicans (Mary Matalin insists they ALL aren't homophobic) and homophobic activism. Just say no. Do not speak against gay marriage and make yourself look foolish, as Larry Craig so memorably did. Just keep your mouth shut, while depriving anti-gay politicians of your reliably anti-gay vote.

Always remember who did this to you--it was the right, not the left.

You owe them nothing. Not a damn thing, sir.

~*~

A few years ago, during some big local GOP fundraiser, Senator Graham's car got towed. Not a big deal, but I happened to know the folks who towed him. They described to me how he came in person (not like most VIPs, who routinely send flunkies/assistants) to get his car out of hock, all while making jokes about whether he had inadvertently parked in a Democratic spot. He shook everyone's hand, he told them to keep up the good work, enforcing the law ("even when it hurts!") by towing the cars that weren't legally parked. It's important work, and people don't often understand that, he told them. He thanked them for their hard work, thanked them for towing him. It's a dirty job, etc. And he smiled his trademark high-beam Southern Gentleman smile.

By the time he left the tow-yard, those guys would have handed over their firstborn sons to Senator Graham. They felt honored they had towed his car.

I also remember Lindsey Graham in the local Christmas parade, one of the few politicians who seems to enjoy riding in a convertible with Santa, various cheerleaders and police chiefs. He grins, laughs and waves, obviously having the time of his life, and the crowd always applauds him vigorously, waving back with undisguised enthusiasm, affection and aplomb. I have attempted not to wave back at him, since he IS a Republican....but this is simply impossible to do. As I have written here before, Lindsey Graham is one of the most charming people in the world.

It's time to use the charm, Senator. The Southern Gentleman that you so graciously embody, is being put to the test. It's time to rise above your critics. It's also time to remember who you are, and who they are. To put it very nakedly and very bluntly: They are people who would kill you if they had the chance. They want to eliminate gay people, and by labeling you gay, they have placed you in their (figurative, but possibly literal) cross-hairs. Please be careful. As you have learned, these people don't play fair.

And as always, stay tuned, sports fans.