CSotD: Default is our own
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I’m kind of sorry I used up Stephen Dedalus’s line from “Ulysses,” “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake” in a headline a few weeks ago, because here’s Matt Wuerker painting Uncle Sam as a reluctant dreamer awakening to a new reality.
Then again, Joyce seems to have been above the awakening in Ireland of his era, unlike Yeats who struggled to observe the change, in love with the revolutionary Maude Gonne but unable to commit to her vision, or her allies.
For Dedalus, in both Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist, Irish politics underlay nearly everything from his aunt’s hairbrushes and squabbles over Christmas dinner to drunken latenight arguments in brothels, but they remained part of his culture, not part of any political consciousness.
Less an issue of the face in power than the face on the syrup bottle.
Juxtaposition of the Day
(Ed Hall)
Yes, it did take us that long, and while Aunt Jemima is pretty small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, that’s precisely why she makes such a good example at the moment.
Gorrell’s white man honestly can’t figure out why he is suddenly under siege, and that’s precisely what is meant by “white privilege.” His puzzled analysis assumes that he is the default because he always has been.
And he misunderstands Martin Luther King because he genuinely doesn’t recognize how the color of his skin has indeed been considered before the content of his character, while, for visible minorities, the opposite is true.
Women and minorities in the workplace have always been judged with a sort of “despite” factor: How good of them that, despite not being one of us, they were able to behave like one of us.
It was never quite put that way, but it was very much seen that way, and not out of malice but out of insensibility.
It starts with the assumption that the default is the goal, that everybody wants to be “us.”
The toxic element of the “Melting Pot” myth being that we assume enough white goes into it that the resulting mix is never terribly dark.
“We,” the majority, can easily see the offense in watermelon, blackface and banjos, but it was harder, in the Sixties, to figure out that black people did not want to be referred to as “spades,” however affectionately we thought it came across.
Similarly, we thought that taking away Aunt Jemima’s bandana and making her younger and more stylish would cancel her problem.
Not realizing that it still left her in the secondary position of being the darkie we call “Aunt” because we can neither give her the honorific of “Mrs.” nor the intimacy of a first name.
And that, after all, whatever we call her, she’s still a servant, just as Uncle Tom and Uncle Remus were, however beloved, still slaves and darkies.
If you feel squeamish knowing that the performers at the Cotton Club were not allowed to sit in the audience at the Cotton Club, you’re halfway there.
It’s seeing Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben as “them” on “our” grocery store shelves that should help you grasp how deep the roots are planted.
Getting them off the shelves won’t solve the problem, but keeping them there makes it worse.
And, to go back to Wuerker’s cartoon, Mainstream America is finally waking up to the fact that it’s time, and past time.
The windows are shaking, the walls are rattling, the times they are a-changing.
Maybe.
Juxtaposition #2
Feedback from the Supreme Court decision on gay and lesbian rights in the workplace offers two different angles on the same topic.
Telnaes is more ambiguous in her statement, because she might be depicting a balance in favor of the “equal treatment” noted on the fulcrum she draws of the Court building.
Or that balance might be between textual interpretation versus imposing personal values on the case, though I’d say that better explains the wide 6-3 split than it does the overall decision.
But there’s no doubt how Varvel sees the decision: Those who agree that the Constitution and existing federal law apply to gay and lesbian workers are not simply “liberals” but Democrats.
Gorsuch and Roberts, who voted with the majority, were appointed by Trump and GWB respectively, not by Democratic presidents, though Varvel’s “evolution” caption could include that.
And let’s ignore, for now, the idea that “evolution” is implicitly positive.
Note, rather, that Clarence Thomas does not have elephant feet but human feet.
Which takes us back to Gorrell’s cartoon and the concept of normalcy, default and privilege: Varvel assumes (consciously or subconsciously) that denying rights to LBGTQ people is not “Republican” but “normal” and that granting them rights is a Democratic position that goes against the default.
We’re not woke yet.
Juxtaposition #3
(Francis)
Getting Brother Leo on the same page as Wiley Miller’s doppelganger is an accomplishment in itself, but note that, as is usually the case, the gang in Non Sequitur take a pragmatic, cynical viewpoint, while the Francis folks are less tethered by practical experience.
It’s not likely that we could start things up again on a Benedictine level where the straw we sleep on is regularly turned over to make sure we’re not hiding luxuries.
Still, when you look at the price of our housing and of our cars, even before you get into the vacations we feel we deserve and the electronic toys we must have, it doesn’t take a CPA to notice that most of our income goes right out the door to feed the beast.
“Live simply that others may simply live” is a beautiful sentiment, but I’m afraid it’s a matter of shoving toothpaste back into the tube.
Once we start up again, some will live that simpler lifestyle, but I doubt it will be many more than lived it before the crisis.
Thus the new normal is apt to look a lot like the old normal.
You still have the option of righteousness, of course.
But you always did.
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