|
|
 |
 Thoughtful Musings From A Sensitive Guy. By Jeff Smith ALLOW ME TO say before I launch into this, that I do so not out of any desire to get your goat, start a fight, offend anyone or exacerbate existing inequities or prejudices within our contemporary cultural context; nor am I simply giving in to some childish impulse to act up.
I digress. Anyway, I was given heart for this sort of enterprise by a recent essay on a revival of the old Amos 'n' Andy show, this one backed by Bill Cosby. The essay made the point that it's a shame that something that started out funny and authentically African-American or black or whatever term currently applies, had been pushed beyond the pale (get it?) by interracial tension and political correctness. I hate both of them and try to refrain from their practice. But being a white, male, Anglo-Saxon Protestant in America, I'm not in the most empathetic or sympathetic position to be urging us all to lighten up and laugh at ourselves and one another. My situation was improved considerably when I got to be a gimp, and thus a member of quite a minor minority, but then even the other "differently abled" got on my ass for employing the term "gimp." Jesus. I'd like to know what they'd write about in the middle of a week when Fife Symington's case has just gone to the jury, but the verdict won't be back until after deadline. Anyway, here goes: Q. What do you call a female bisexual? A. A lesbian with car-trouble. Duck. AND WHILE WE'RE on the subject of bad taste, CNN Headline News has been running and re-running the story all morning of Garth Brooks' big-ass concert in Central Park. This is problematic for cultural arbiters such as I, in various ways. Mr. Brooks is a putative country singer. He's from Oklahoma and he wears what I believe to be a Bailey hat on-stage. For those of you who are not conversant with brands and styles of cowboy hats, Bailey is right around third in popularity, after Resistol and Stetson, and the style Brooks wears is one of Bailey's best sellers. Whatever. Brooks started out more or less okay, writing and singing about truck drivers and faithless love and hormone-obsessed teenagers who can't go making out in pickup trucks until the horses have been fed and the stalls shoveled out. But in no time he had crossed-over, gone mainstream, put together this stage show with all the pyrotechnics and pomposity of a Kiss concert. He sells more records than almost anybody. More than Porter Waggoner. More than Barry Manilow. More than Barry White. One should not be able to cite the foregoing three recording artists in the same paragraph, but Garth Brooks has made this feasible, and for this he is worthy of censure. Outdoor concerts are fine for country singers, provided they involve cutting and baling hay from the seating areas before hand. Concerts in New York's Central Park are okay too, if you've got headliners like Simon and Garfunkel or Billy Joel. Combining the two won't work. ANYWAY, HERE I sit, wishing the jury would simply retire to the room long enough for a burger and a shake, come back and say, "Hey, we knew he way lying all along, and let Judge Strand send him to prison for the rest of the summer. The public needs to see that the system works and that guys with initials and Roman numerals in their names have to play fair, too." AND WHILE WE'RE on the subject of rich white boys and playing by the rules, there is such a thing as overdoing it. Okay, so Barry Switzer is a bit of a putz, and hasn't exactly been a role model for his football players, but he deserves the benefit of the doubt when he makes an honest mistake. It made perfect sense for Switzer to stash his loaded .38 under the t-shirts and skivvies in his suitcase, when he had a houseful of kids running around and he was just about to hop a plane for training camp. Hopping jets for one pro football coaching chore or another is as routine for Switzer as jumping in the Chevy to head for the office is to you or me. So when the X-ray at the airport spotted Barry's revolver, I can just hear him groaning, "Oh shit." What I can't get right in my mind is team owner Jerry Jones' high dudgeon over what is essentially a matter of no consequence. Seventy-five thousand dollars? Serious questions about Switzer' future as coach of America's Team? Deep anger and embarrassment? What is this? Barry had a revolver and forgot to leave it in the nightstand. Last I looked, this was protected under the Second Amendment. He didn't point it at anybody. He didn't try to stick up a 7-Eleven. What's this shit with demonizing an inanimate object? I think Jerry Jones is one of the major assholes of American Sport, and as thoroughgoing a hypocrite as walks upright. I hope that all the straight-thinking, common-sense gun-owners of America will pick a new America's Team, if they haven't already, and tell Jerry Jones and Deion Sanders they can take their cute little jokes about $35-million salaries and stick 'em where the sun don't shine.
And I don't mean Green Bay.
|
 |
Home | Currents | City Week | Music | Review | Books | Cinema | Back Page | Archives
|
 |
© 1995-97 Tucson Weekly . Info Booth |
|
I pass along this snippet of folk humor, shared with me just
last night at the poker game, because I got a kick out of it--and
the guy who told it was laughing pretty hard, and he's a good-natured
cowboy without a mean bone in his whole body. Since he quit drinking.
Before that, he says, now and again he'd try to drink up all the
whiskey in town and show off his boxing skills. Which really weren't
much to write home about.
