Got Milf?

ClownHall seems to have invested a bit in a small stable of mediocre syndicated column-milfs like Kathleen Parker and Rebecca Hagelin, the latter of whom grabs a shovel and digs herself halfway to China.

This famous, selfless cry for the safety of others is best associated with the tragedy of the Titanic, when thousands lost their lives in the frozen waters of the sea so many years ago. Not unlike the rising waters in New Orleans, where the ocean began to fill its natural territory after man-made walls that held it back for so long failed, so the mighty waters of the North Atlantic engulfed the damaged vessel that sought to defy nature's icebergs and open waters. But, unlike New Orleans where dry land was nearby, the Titanic was a lone ship, in the middle of the vast waters, filled with helpless souls who had nowhere to go save too few lifeboats.

The harsh reality that dreadful day in 1912 is that most of the passengers would die, and they knew it. Yet, amid the panic and impending doom, the accounts of survivors remind us of a time when civility and honor were more important to many than survival itself.

This is just a dreadful lie. Anyone who's read about the earlier days of sea travel and shipwrecks knows that those days were rife with incidents that modern people would consider simply barbaric -- physically tossing people off lifeboats; leaving people to burn or drown on foundering ships. The history of seafaring has at least as many tales of "every man for himself" as "women and children first".

Nowhere is this more true than in the story of the Titanic. Perhaps Hagelin has edified herself with repeated dewy-eyed visions of Leo DiCaprio heroically putting Kate Winslet on a shard of flotsam before he sank beneath the surface of the frigid, uncaring ocean. But the fact we all know is that the poor Irish in steerage got locked in there. They didn't choose to just sit and die with dignity while their betters on the upper deck got dibs on scarce lifeboat seats. They never got the opportunity to choose. The choice was made for them, just as the choice was made for the poor and displaced in the bathtub of New Orleans.

But what ruffles this soccer mom's feathers is that those destitute untermenschen didn't have the goddamn class to just lay down and die with whatever false dignity their "betters" could comport to them, eulogizing them in the aftermath of an unnecessary death.

No matter. Hagelin's real goal here is to attempt to do some Big Pitcher Thinkin' about the violence in the pop culture that the kids are enjoying these days. Also, that Presley cat -- what's the deal with his hips? Does he not know what that does to the virtuous flower of American womanhood?

So how is it that in fewer than 100 years we have digressed to a society where, when disaster strikes, the story is marked by a display of the worst side of human nature rather than the best?

Could it be that in a pop culture where the gangsta style is "hip" and is reflected and perpetuated in everything from violent rap and hip-hop music, to the clothing styles, to the language and gestures used in "normal" communication, to the negative attitudes toward females and children, that the "style" isn't just a fashion trend but has actually become a way of life for some? In other words, in a culture where many people dress like gangstas, talk like gangstas, and strut like gangstas, should we be shocked and horrified that they start engaging in gangsta crime when given the opportunity?

I always enjoy these ridiculous attempts by wannabe pop-culture mavens to shoehorn their chicken-egg theories into what are usually thinly-veiled classist diatribes. What she really wants to come out and say is, "Why can't these dumb, thieving colored folks have stable families and white picket fences, instead of Mac-10's and spinner rims on their '64 Impalas, while their welfare-queen baby-mommas take care of their 15 illegitimate children?"

Of course, couching it in such terms might be, um, offensive to some folks, who may not even realize some of their subconscious racist tendencies. So they couch it in terms of "culture", bolster it with cherry-picked numbers from hack "scientists" who work on bullshit bell curves, and make their pronunciamentos more in sorrow than in anger.

It's amazingly cynical to use a tragic disaster with thousands of casualties as a cheap vehicle with which to communicate some ass-backwards cultural assumptions. Does it ever occur to any of these people that inner-city violence is a result of public policy, that people revert to instinct when thrust in a maelstrom of low employment, useless schools, and corrupt cops?

Has this dumb broad read about what took place on the bridge to Gretna, LA? (I'd really like to hear Hagelin's "cultural" explanation for that atrocity.) Does she get that that's what most inner-city blacks deal with every day for most of their lives? Does she understand that these kids get conditioned at a very early age by what they see, and what they see is that they might have some success in life if they're exceptional at sports, or they can make the most of what they see by looking at their counterparts as prey?

Suburban hausfraus should not be all that surprised that, when we let our urban areas turn into jungles, that the law of the jungle is what prevails. It would be the same if the inhabitants were white, Asian, or whatever. People are people.

I can't help but conclude that if the tragic natural disaster in New Orleans had occurred in a culture that had daily practiced the Golden Rule, rather than the Gangsta Rot, we would have seen more scenes of neighbors helping neighbors and far fewer scenes of neighbors preying upon neighbors.

I can't help but conclude that if mainstream American culture weren't so desensitized and inured to violence, that the corporate media not only feels but empirically knows that it has to sensationalize everything and make it all bite-size, we might have seen a more reality-based proportion of what happened in New Orleans. I have a sinking feeling that for all the random acts of senseless violence, whether you call it "looting" or "survival", the preponderance of what happened was dull and grim -- people dying slowly, from water rising inexorably as they lay trapped in their attics, or from exposure, or from lack of food and water, or from neglect, or lack of medical attention.

Ho hum. Nothing exciting about watching someone's granny take her last breath outside a football stadium and slump over in her lawn chair, thousands of people clustered on the sidewalk behind her. People would flip the channel before the next SUV/boner pill/hemorrhoid commercial came on -- which, after all, is the point of network news.

I actually agree with Hagelin's overripe pleas for "social and parental rejection to replace the current proliferation and acceptance of such barbaric and destructive messages". I certainly don't let my child watch MTV -- or the Disney Channel, for that matter.

But what Hagelin fails to realize is that this is a consumerist culture across the board. If Americans stop buying shit they don't really want with money they don't really have, the economy collapses. And as we accumulate more and more shit, the danger arises for the retailer class that we'll come to that realization on our own, which would be bad for business. The easiest way to motivate people back into the consumerist paradigm is to excite them, whether by jonesmanship or sex or the frisson of danger.

It's an affectation more than anything, where it intersects with the culture at large. This is a prime mistake that social studies dilettantes like Hagelin make -- inner-city gangs are doing business the way they know best; Fifty Cent and Grand Theft Auto are corporate gimmicks to enable spoiled white suburban teenagers to assert their masculinity in a culturally acceptable way.

Human nature is to periodically ratchet these things up a notch. But it's clearly just packaged rebellion; for all the whining about MTV, few people bother to point out that it is very heavily censored, to the point where dirty words, sexual terms, drug-use slang, and even politically-charged lyrics either get blipped or never get seen or heard in the first place. Wanna take bets on whether or not Hagelin has ever watched (or God forbid, enjoyed) an episode of The Sopranos or CSI?

Don't like it? Then don't buy it, and don't give Junior the money to buy it on his own. That's your choice in a free market. But quit dragging these tired-ass classist/racist theories out of the catacombs to do your dirty work for you.