BuggBlog

"Attitude" is the new "uppity"

As a native Kentuckian, I want to point out that not everyone from that area of the country -- roughly the Bluegrass State and points directly south -- is a seething, closet racist. It's not perfect there, but it's changed a lot over the years, and it will continue to do so.

But that rot stubbornly remains in some places. From today's Washington Post story on the increasing popularity of Michelle Obama:

She hasn't won over everyone. "I don't much care for her and it has nothing to do with her color or race or anything," said Beverly Watson, 61, a Tennessee Republican. "She just seems to have a big attitude, like she's just above everyone else."

Okay, we all know that when someone says up front that what they're about to say has nothing to with color or race, there's a pretty good chance that they're about to say something that's brimming with racial overtones. But the big tip off, and a phrase that I've heard many times in many similar forms, is the complaint about a "big attitude." It's what a certain kind person starts saying after they figure out they can't say "uppity" anymore.

While this particular quote comes from Tennessee, it could easily have come from Kentucky -- I sometimes think the only real difference between the states is that Tennessee has Dolly Parton while we have Loretta Lynn. But it's a reminder that regardless how much some people learn to code their language to cloak their intentions, some people are never going to change.

A brief request for my Kentucky family and friends

It's no surprise by now that the people behind the anti-gay-marriage movement who claimed that they only cared about protecting marriage and that the state constitutional amendments they passed in state after state would never, ever apply to gay people beyond the simple ban on marriage rights, were, one must say, full of shit. As expected, the same people and organizations and churches behind the amendments are now moving forward in their attempts to legislate gays and lesbians out of as many aspects of public life as they can.

While I've lived in D.C. and Virginia for 20 years now, my home of origin is Kentucky -- no matter the issues I have with it or my family, no matter how far I may stray from demographic of coal mines and horse farms, I remain a Kentucky boy at heart. So there's a certain level at which it hurts to see these same folks who passed a gay marriage ban in my home state now turn their attention to adoption. The proposed law requires that children only be placed in adoptive and foster homes with people are "not cohabiting outside of a marriage that is legally valid in Kentucky" -- a not particularly subtle approach, you'd have to say.

I hope some of the old friends from home that I've reconnected with in small and large ways over the past year will consider thinking about this bill -- Kentucky Senate Bill 68 -- for a few minutes and calling or e-mailing your state representatives to urge a stop to it. The idea that only straight, legally married couples can provide foster and adoptive homes to needy children is not only disputed by research, it's disputed by our own life experiences. Having two straight, un-divorced parents is no guarantee of a healthy upbringing -- case in point, preacher's kids. Please, we all knew those.

The ability to provide a stable and loving home has nothing to do with sexual orientation. This attempt, like the ongoing battle in Florida and the recent voter initiative in Arkansas, aren't about what's best for children in need of a family -- it's about sating the political desires of anti-gay activists.

And when it comes down to it, Kentuckians, do you really want to follow the lead of Arkansas?

Broadcast news

I've finally made use of the various audio equipment and software I've purchased in the past couple of years and recorded my first podcast, a show for Metro Weekly Extra. My first media job ever came when I was 16 and I snagged a position as a DJ at my hometown radio station, WPKY. At the time, it was a dual-broadcast AM/FM station -- apparently it's been split into two stations, WPKY re-broadcasting ESPN radio on AM and the renamed WAVJ broadcasting country on FM.

Anyway, WPKY is where I learned how to edit audio, patch through live feeds, and all the other skills that haven't directly translated to the digital age. You wouldn't even believe the shabby little recording booth in the back where every commercial I did the voiceover for sounded like I lived in the bottom of a deep tin can. You could only record one live voice and one pre-taped audio track from the cart machine onto the second cart machine -- if you wanted more than one audio track, say a second Dolly Parton song or something, you had to quickly mute the mike and swap carts fast enough that no appreciable pause made it into the final recording.

I learned a lot about how to make things work in less than ideal situations.

A handy skill, given that I'm still trying to figure out exactly how all my software works, etc. But the basics of juggling tracks and writing for time and nipping and tucking sound is all the same. Fun, fun, fun. I'm looking forward to doing more of them and trying some things I never got to do in my early radio days. Like, you know, having more than one song or sound effect track at a time.

Although I probably will throw in some Dolly Parton just for old times sake. 

Oh, the shame of heritage

Via Andrew, a Kentucky Democrat voices an opinion to The New Yorker on Clinton v. Obama:

"I really don't want an African-American as President ... I thought about it. I think he would put too many minorities in positions over the white race. That's my opinion. After 1964, you saw what the South did ... There's a lot of white people that just wouldn't vote for a colored person. Especially older people," - a Clinton supporter in Eastern Kentucky, to George Packer of the New Yorker.

I'm not sure what's sadder, the attitude represented by the thinking or the fact that my home state seems determined to be as embarrassing as possible these days. Perhaps I could take refuge in that I'm only half-Kentuckian if you look solely at my paternal lineage.

Unfortunately, my maternal lineage is in Indiana, and Hoosiers have their own problems lately.

My, what a queer little boy you are!

Via Towleroad, I caught wind of a new book, You're Going to Be Gay!, that features photographs of adult gays and lesbians alongside childhood pictures that should have announced to the world at large  their upcoming homo-tude. Like any gay man who looks back fondly at the days when friends and family refused to see the flaming truths in front of them, I love these sorts of pictures.

Luckily, when I was last at my mom's house going through two big boxes of old photos I managed to begin a long-term scanning project that, in addition to chronicling the history of my family, will show exactly how nelly a little boy I was. For example, here's a shot of my sister and me with our Grandpa Joe (actually our great-grandfather) circa 1975:

Honestly, the gunpowder horn, rifle and miniature football jersey aren't fooling anyone -- maybe it's the way I'm striking a pose. Although those pants would have made anyone look gay. Just FYI, despite her hair and the big animal trap she's joyfully carrying, my sister turned out straight.

School pictures and other portraits seemed bring out some of my best unintentional swishiness, but I haven't gotten the chance to scan some of the more obvious evidence. I do have a couple instances, though, including this one from a couple years before my rifle-totin' pic:

It may not seem obvious in these more enlightened days, but I took huge amounts of shit in elementary school for having such long hair, and was called "hippie" with some regularity. I, however, loved my hair. It was very luxuriant and lustrous and felt good in the wind -- I was an early connoisseur of such things as Body on Tap. Interestingly, my shirt appears to be a prescient Native American interpretation of Space Invaders. But even before my locks grew long, I think I looked pretty gay. In fact, I couldn't even be bothered to wear pants:

As opposed to my sister, who though sleepy managed to maintain a sense of propriety. Of course, all this nelly-ness may be mostly in hindsight, at least as far as the photographic records go. Then again, I know my parents never ran to grab the Kodak when I donned my sister's clothes or commandeered her Barbies, so my pool of evidence is limited.

My old Kentucky...oh, no

There seem to be two ways for Kentucky politicians to get themselves mentioned in the national news:

1. Be Mitch McConnell.

2. Say stupid shit.

So Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) is just the latest example of why my home state pride cringes in expectation every time I see the state mentioned in a headline. As for Davis, well, stereotypes aside, Kentuckians are not stupid in general. They're not stupid about race. They know calling a black man "boy" is racist. They know that even a racist doesn't use "boy" in public unless he really, really means it.

Judging from his "apology," I'd guess that Rep. Davis really meant it.

Be careful what you put in your mouth

I have watched my dinner die.

To grow up in farm country is to have a better understanding of the connection between the meat on your plate and the animal you see grazing in the field outside the dining room window. While my parents weren't farmers, my grandparents and aunts and uncles were, and our rural Kentucky home was surround by fields: an uncle's field across the road, my grandfather's pasture along the creek, a second cousin's rows of corn out back. We all had gardens, from which we all traded fresh vegetables -- and, yes, home-grown tomatoes are superior to the generic ones you find stocked in your grocery's produce section.

I never saw a cow slaughtered -- though I did have a small hand once in helping convert a bull to a steer by slicing off his testicles -- but I understood the cow-to-hamburger process. Chickens, though, were a food source I understood even better. Granny had a chicken coop behind the house, where I would sometimes go with her in the mornings to collect the big brown eggs from the nests. And I watched from the kitchen window as Granny took a hatchet to a chicken's neck and the headless bird briefly ran around the yard in a bloody slapstick routine.

It really is the kind of chore where you want to be sure the dogs are put up before you start.

For Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, this up-close experience of the food chain should make me -- potentially, at least -- a better, more careful eater.

Hillbilly morality

No, I'm not talking about Hillary and Bill again. I'm talking about my home state -- the home of horses, whiskey and women, at least as they would have it -- Kentucky. Although last November Kentuckians performed admirably in voting out a particularly idiotic and homophobic governor, the state legislature still has its fair share of backwoods moralizers. The state senate has just passed a bill banning public universities and state agencies from providing benefits to gay and lesbian partners. If passed, it would effectively strip benefits already offered by the University of Louisville and University of Kentucky.

How idiotic are some of the bill's sponsors? Let's take Sen. Vernie McGaha (R), who says, "I do not recognize domestic partnerships as being a correct thing....My Bible teaches against it." As to the argument from university administrators that this legislation would make it more difficult to recruit talented teachers and others, McGaha thinks the answer is simple:

"Keep recruiting," he said. "There's plenty out there."

I'm sure that's just what Jesus would do.

As Towleroad notes, Courier-Journal reporter Stephanie Steitzer*identifies Democratic opponent of the bill Sen. Ernesto Scorsone as "a homosexual," a rather surprisingly archaic and offensive usage from a newspaper that should know better.

Anyway, every time I visit home I get a bit wistful about all the things I miss about my native home. Then the people who actually run the place open their mouths and I thank god all over again that I moved the hell away. I just wish all the people who've chosen to stay could have an easier run of it.

*Based on a very nice e-mail from the reporter in question, I've struck my original reference. Sometimes what a reporter turns in isn't what makes it into print -- which still makes it a surprising moment for a respected paper such as the Courier-Journal to use "homosexual" as a noun as opposed to an adjective.