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March 09, 2004
All Apologies
I have been a mask of myself over the past few posts and I'm not particularly proud. What I have said in my litmus test about profanity is selfish and lazy. So I hereby pledge to work harder to avoid profanity.
As I drove this morning to pick up my mother from the clinic (sigh), I continued to fume about Ironbear and what his resignation represents, writ large sociologically. But I'm not going to indulge that here - just see Bell's Rules. The next moment I reviewed my beatdown of Acidman/JarheadDad and it came back to the N Word.
If you have a problem with a hideously objectionable individual who happens to be your boss at the corporation, you might choose to call him 'a running dog of the imperial capitalist class'. If you chose those words, you would be hard pressed to convince anybody that you were anything but a communist of some sort. Likewise, if you had a problem with a hideously objectionable individual who happens to be African American and you choose to call him 'a nigger' you can't convince anyone with an ounce of brains that your not some sort of racist.
Our choice of words mark us.
I've been XBoxing Live for a few months- actually a year, and it's time to renew my subscription - and recently I've noticed how annoying it is for me to play with adolescents intent on proving their mastery of curses, the latest and most annoying perjorative which is "That's so gay."
I get really tired of this rabble, and I can't tell you how often I drive by churches and temples wanting to be inside where the utterances are more profound than profane. It's not that I am seeking safety from offense, but respite. It's unfortunate, all this mindless anger, all this witless expression, and the dissonance it creates saddens me. People curse and spit and throw plates of linguini. Their limited eloquence cannot bear the weight of their passion and so they are ignored. I can do better, and so I will.
In this, I am not trying to be a role-monkey. I'm simply trying to discipline myself and do what I know I am capable of doing. As I said, I look on the last few days of posts and I can't say that I am proud of the way I've said things, knowing I had just run out of patience and let a 'fuck' suffice.
What's done is done. The future awaits.
Posted by mbowen at March 9, 2004 11:15 AM
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