Dr. Frank's What's-it

Yep, there's a lot of that from the party of tolerance the last few days.

Funny, I'm from fly-over country myself (just moved from Indiana to Florida) and I considered myself a liberal Dem, ages 18-22, and then I started to see crap like that.

In some ways I still am one, but from another era of political America.

Dave

I've been seeing a lot of this sort of thing around Denver as well. Couple this with the growth of conspiracy theories about the election being stolen in Ohio and it becomes rather obvious why the youth vote is doing little: they seem to be focusing on everything but the issues and becoming so angry that true organization vanishes.

Intollerance sucks. And when it's blindly aimed at people who voted a certain way and not against poeple who voted a certain way for a certain reason, thats no good either; but I have to say, it pisses me off when people rank "moral values" as the most important aspect of an election. To me, morals are for people, not governments. This sort of thing goes against everything I believe about liberty. Call it intollerance for intollerance.

How about the Prez (and indeed the whole right-wing) using the word "Massachusetts" as a perjorative? "San Francisco" is used the same way.

I have no idea who that dude is holding the sign. If he's a young gay man, can you really say you hold his anger against him? As for the standard issue anarchists and burining Bush in effigy, BFD. The "Black Bloc" or whoever have no interest in a "winning strategy" in any case, so who cares what they do?

Middle America is smart as hell, just look at this list! Please ignore the AVG Income column as it's not particularly applicable considering cost of living varies tremendously by state.

http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~gcharter/iq.txt

Them folks making up 96% (24/25 states) of the last half of the list are on your side frank!

Yeah, Nick I take your point, and I agree that the "anarchists" and the effigy-burning are an irrelevant yawn. However, it seems to me that the guy with the sign lends force to the use of "San Francisco" as a pejorative, rather than otherwise. Anyway, if he did intend the sign as an expression of support for a policy shift on gay marriage, I'd say his analysis is a bit off, unless Middle America includes, say, California, Oregon, and Senator Kerry himself. That's not to excuse the GOP's apparent attempts to exploit the issue in this election, of course.

I don't know about Massachusetts, but I am a native San Franciscan and I think the Bay Area is a great place to live if you can afford it. But I can rather relate to the use of "San Francisco" as a pejorative, because of the the widespread attitude of precious, supercilious snobbery and the overwhelming contempt and hatred for everyone outside of the magic circle. That's true even if you happen to agree with a lot of their points, as I often do.

Even though the influx of Massachusetts refugees has made this a "Blue" state, I'm still thankful that I live in New Hampshire. Our lefty douchebags are much better behaved.
And by the way, to a NH native, "Massachusetts" IS a pejorative. Mostly because half of their population, it seems, has come here to live - which goes back to how we became "Blue."

That's right, fan. If only everybody were as smart as us, we'd all be voting for the same candidate and our side would always win.

Well, I just spent a week on the west coast and I feel about as much love for it as the guy with the sign does for us.

i dont know if this is relevant to what your talking about but i find people on the coasts view the midwest as a bunch of turd farmers standing knee deep in shit and wearing old potato sacks. but we actually have rational intelligent people here and the fact we don't have a view of the ocean doesnt make us any less so. flyover states. that's such a condescending comment its unbelievable. this ain't hawaii, but it aint a wasteland either. perhaps new york and california can cecede from the union and become the united states of narcissus.

Who does that guy think he is? Vanilla Ice? Nice facial expression, dude. Fuck you and your lame sign, then!

Yeah Frank, I agree that the City can be completely insufferable. "The Best Place on Earth" and all that crap. And my family and I had to leave because of the outrageous cost of living. But a native Bay Arean ridiculing San Franciscans (and maybe sticking up for Oakland) is different from a rank outsider doing it based on little or no personal experience. No one likes an outsider insulting their home, whether it's Neil Young singing "Southern Man" or some right-winger talking about California falling into the sea or Bush using "Massachusetts" as an insult.

So my point is less about the virtues and drawbacks of Mass or the Bay Area, than about the very idea of insulting an entire region or state. I grew up in Berkeley. For all their faults and innanities, I love Berkeley, I love the Bay Area, I love California, and, despite this awful election, I love America. But if a President is supposed to be a "uniter not a divider," where the hell does he get off insulting one of the 50 states he represents?

So to bring it back to your post, the Left (or whatever the hell these protesters belong to) has no monopoly on broad-brush insults of entire regions based on stereotypes. The right has been insulting city-dwellers and coastal residents for decades.

And as for the "fuck middle America" sign, all those "God hates fags" signs lend as much justification to his stereotype as his sign does to theirs. And, as the results from Tuesday on the anti-gay ballot intiatives show, apparently you can wave the hate signs and still win.

Nameless, I kind of take the term "fly-over" as a badge of honor. I enjoy saying I'm from fly-over country. I wish I still lived there. I agree that the term has despicable roots, but that's kind of what makes it so fun to be from there. :D

The idea that all eastcoasters have a negative and nieve view of middle America is no more true than the idea that all middle americans are turd-farmers. Some idiot made a stupid sign. You don't start railing on Georgians just because you see a guy from the KKK on Springer.

One of my co-workers, a female, minority, Bay Area Democrat shocked me when she told me she voted for Bush. When I asked why, she told me: "This country just has too much freedom."

Honest.

Well, j francis, there's one Bush voter who's gonna get what she wants.

What do you mean, Nick?

I mean that many, many freedoms are going to be threatened by the Federal Government over the next 4 years. The USA PATRIOT Act will be reupped and possibly expanded; workers' rights at the workplace, including the right to organize unions, will continue to be attacked and eroded; since last week millions of gay and lesbian Americans have been relegated to a form of 2nd class citizenship, and I expect this to continue; tens of thousands of soldiers will have their freedom stolen by another "stop-loss" order or, alternately, civilians will be involuntarily drafted to restock our depleted, overstretched military; there's even word of a Republican bill currently in the House that would forbid the Supreme Court from hearing cases on the Establishment Clause -- that is, sellout out our freedom of religion.

Basically, I think we're seeing the emergence of a sort of Christo-fascist political movement that is holding real power now in Washington. If freedom is really on the march, I think it's moving double-quick out of the US.

i was reacting more to peoples comments in the past i've heard than the guy with the sign. i don't know there is a strong subconcious condescension of the so called flyover states that i think a lot of people dont even realize they have. kind of like when punk rockers try and play country. they are saying "look im playing country , isnt it cute and quirky?" well yeah, i guess if you play it like that it is.

My freedoms are being threatened by a Christo-fascist movement, he typed on his computer.

No, Blixa, you typed that on your computer. You can read what I actually wrote just above.

You're right it was a paraphrase not a quote, hence the lack of quotations. Perhaps I needed to explicitly state as much.

Anyway, don't let me interrupt your ongoing stock-taking of your endlessly vanishing rights. What are you at now? 90% of the rights you had in '99? 80%? Don't tell me - 70%? That low already? Boy that fascist Bush sure works fast.

Blixa, I don't understand your point here. Do you think rights are unimportant? Do you disagree with my assessment of specific rights that are or will be under attack over the next 4 years? If so, please tell me what your disagreement is.

I posted my comment in response to a pretty bizarre-sounding statement quoted by j francis that this country "has too much freedom." I said that the person who said that may "get what she wanted" out of Bush, which I knew was a kind of sideways statement so I was happy to flesh it out a bit to explain what the hell I was referring to.

So that's it in a nutshell. I don't think Bush is interested in most of the Bill of Rights, I do think my rights are threatened by a political movement that talks openly about using the Bible as the basis for our nation's laws, and the government has already taken measures to attack many important rights (privacy, bail, trial by jury, equal protection, free assembly and expression) over the last 4 years.

If you think my positing "the emergence of a sort of Christo-fascist political movement" is alarmist or inaccurate, fine, we can discuss the validity of that term. But I do think that many important leaders in the GOP, inlcuding Bush, disagree fundamentally with toleration and diversity, and are willing to use the apparatus of the state to enforce their standards of personal morality, public patrotism, and political loyalty.

Yes I suppose I do disagree that any of your rights are or will be "under attack" in any meaningful sense. Of course, in a hyperbolic blog-comment sense, it's certainly true that there's a Christo-fascist political movement threatening your freedoms. Keep typin'!

Guess we know that's not really DEEP STORM holding the sign...unless he got someone who knew how to spell to make it for him.

50 times.. damn. after about 42 i'd be like.. ow, n junk.

DEEPSTORM,

Now I know you're lying. You're just a liberal-hating conservative trying to make liberals look like bigoted, hateful idiots.

Uhhh...now take your lightsaber and strike me down and your journey to the dark side will be complete?

Nope, thought of plenty things to say, but I have some respect for Dr. Frank, the blog, and people who post here.

I won't be checking this thread anymore. If you wanna say something, feel free to email me.