This Thanksgiving, I would like to point out that I'm thankful for Guilty White Liberals.
It's nice to have a big, fat, hairy example to help you stay on the path of true open-mindedness and not have to go through life with a stick up your butt. Guilty White Liberals are everywhere these days, making excuses for people and chastising those of us who still think Blazing Saddles is hilarious.
For these people, we'll use the term GWL, which is pronounced like "jewel," except with a hard "G." Wait! That would be "ghoul," which is fine with me. How in the world do words spelled j-e-w-e-l and g-h-o-u-l rhyme, exactly? The English language sucks; we need to bring back Esperanto.
You know the GWLs. They're the people who say stupid things like, "Oh, I don't see color." People who say that are either blind or lying. I get freaked out by the absence of color. I have a recurring nightmare about being trapped in an all-white room with Nicole Kidman.
I've been a liberal all my life, and I've been white even longer than that. (A little Roe v. Wade humor there.) But I've never felt guilty. I'm not exactly an innocent white liberal; I'm more like "not guilty" or acquitted, like O.J.
Here's an example: I once told somebody that his parents were so rich, their maid was a U.S. citizen. That's funny, if I do say so myself. Alas, somebody thought the joke was "racist."
I pointed out that being a U.S. citizen is a matter of nationality, not race. Last I checked, people of all different kinds of races are U.S. citizens. See, the humor of that joke lies in the fact that some people of means hire as domestic help folks who are in this country illegally, perchance to pay substandard wages.
(And for those of you who are offended by the use of the word "illegally," we'll just say that like the seagull that finds itself over the Mojave Desert after a strong Pacific storm, some people find themselves in a country not of their birth after having been buffeted about by the cruel winds of economic happenstance and circumstance. I'll have to pause here; I feel a tear welling up.)
I was then told that it was obvious that I was talking about Mexicans. After pointing out to this educated person that Mexican is also a nationality and not a race (I swear to God that some people—including some Hispanics—think Mexicans are a separate race!), I went on to point out that the joke specifically said that the maid was a U.S. citizen, thereby precluding the possibility that she could be of any other nationality.
This blurring of races, ethnic groups and nationalities is mostly sociological and anthropological hoo-hah. Noted American anthropologist (and the most-unfortunately named) Carleton S. Coon said that there were five distinct races. Pacific Islanders, Northern Africans/Arabs and Native Americans may indeed be separate and distinct races, but for this column, we'll stick with my assertion that there are exactly 3 1/2 different races—black, Asian, white and whatever Sammy Sosa has become.
Anyway, I was finally asked, point-blank, what I have against Mexicans. Fed up, I mentioned that I've been married to a "Mexican" for 30 years and that both of my kids are Hispanic, but then added, sarcastically, that I hate all the rest of them.
It went downhill from there.
The GWLs, emboldened by President Obama's election, are, in the words of Richard Pryor, "smelling their piss." They're out waggling their fingers and tsk-tsk-ing people all over the place. ESPN recently suspended announcer (and also unfortunately named) Bob Griese for a remark he made on the air. A graphic showing the top five NASCAR racers was shown, and when asked why NASCAR driver Juan Pablo Montoya was absent, Griese said that he was "out having a taco."
At most, that's a two or three on the logarithmic Richter-like Scale of Shouldn't Have Said That. But GWLs gave it a nine. Some even got the vapors.
I'm sorry, but tacos are a universal food. I'd say that over the course of a year, I probably eat 100 tacos to every one hamburger. I wanted to look up the national ratio of consumption of the two foods, but when I went on Wikipedia, it said that they stopped counting when comic actor Sinbad died.
Montoya said he was never bothered by the remark and didn't think Griese should have been suspended.
The very next week, an NFL announcer got in trouble because he referred to the fleet-footedness of a running back as "getting-away-from-the-cops" speed. The running back was black, so out came the cries of racism.
Really? Only black people run from the cops? When I was a little kid, we would put a dummy in the street, then laugh as people freaked out as they drove over it. That's what passed for interactive entertainment back in the day. Eventually, the police would show up, and off we would take. I know exactly what that guy meant. When you're running from the cops, that burst of adrenaline is a godsend—especially for a prepubescent Not Guilty White Liberal.
