Jack & Jill Politics

White People Problems from Back Alley Films on Vimeo.

I got this message from a white guy who would like to remain anonymous but wrote this poignant yet hilarious missive as a broadside to the Tea Party.

I’ve paired it with this funny as heck music video called “White People Problems” which include such burning issues (I’m quoting directly from the song lyrics, mind ya):

“There was such a long line at the Apple Store…my labradoodle crapped on my mahogany floor!”

You know, white people problems…

White People Problems from Back Alley Films on Vimeo.

A Manifesto from the Privileged White Guys Who Are Disgusted With the Angry, Privileged, and Not Too Subtly Racist White Guys:
You’re Right, Fellas. It’s Curtains for White Privilege. And Not a Moment Too Soon
by Chalmers Lattimore

Its time to give some credit to the largely white, male, over-45 Republicans who identify themselves as tea party supporters.

They may be astoundingly inarticulate when it comes to explaining just what they are so angry about, but speaking from the other end of the angry white-guy spectrum — I think they deserve credit for knowing exactly what is going on.
They are being shown the door.

Because what they see – correctly, perceptively, and clearly – is the loss of exactly the privileges and unearned advantages that some of us other affluent 45+ year-old white guys hoped they would lose when we supported, and continue to support, massive, transformative initiatives like health care and broad financial regulation.

Guys, I really do understand. It must hurt. Why should you go gently into that good country club?

You’ve had a good, long run. You’ve had health insurance in a system so irrational and costly that other people couldn’t have it. Your children went to good schools that got a disproportionate amount of public support. You had your lawn mowed by people from ethnic groups who will soon outnumber you.

Now, to be fair, I know that many of you have been genuine victims of the collapsing financial markets. You know which markets I mean — the ones you wanted unfettered and free of regulation. It can’t be easy waking up to find that now you are the one mowing the lawns.
But you aren’t imagining things. What you see and feel is real. It’s curtains.

The show is over, the stage door is open, and we are waiting politely for you to pick up your things, turn off the lights, and leave. That’s right, that longest of all running shows, the one that you performed for most of the post-war period, the one in which you fought any attempt to advantage anyone else lest you lose even the slightest perk, is closing. But please don’t direct your rage at those who will now receive the most basic health care equity at your expense. The people you should blame are some of your fellow affluent white males – guys like me — who have watched in disgust as you took and took and took and, in the name of self-reliance, opposed anyone else getting anything you scorned as a “handout. ” That’s right: we watched and took notes when you opposed such luxuries as school breakfast programs and prescription drugs for poor seniors.

You’ll probably find this improbable, but we have been waiting since high school for this moment. Remember those brainy, slightly awkward, ambitious kids who never seemed to get into the ”High School Musical” version of life you inhabited? Well, while we didn’t really feel like keeping in touch with you, you might like to know that we actually were in medical school, law school, and grad school getting MDs and PhDs. And later, some of us (not the PhDs!) were making the real money while you were taking the Carlton Sheets “buying real estate with no down payment” course. A few of us, while you were lost in your own gospel of selfishness, even learned enough about law, economics and poverty to realize that our own country was virtually epidemic with hunger and homelessness.

Now an almost embarrassing confession, and it has to do with just how we know so much about your loathing of those who are different and how we know precisely what kind of people were treated to the sting of your disgust. You see, we were often in the same locker rooms that you were in (yeah, some of us like golf, too). And at more than a few of those football games when we sat behind you, we heard your incoherent rants.

I’d almost feel bad for you if you just hadn’t been so gleefully mean spirited. But that darn locker room was a veritable laboratory of loathing, a place where — free from the scrutiny of people of color, women, gay people, and secure in your towel-slapping enclave – you showed a truly prodigious ability to come up with endlessly varied slurs to express your selfishness and racism and homophobia.

We listened, we seethed, and we waited.

Hey, it wasn’t all ugliness. Sometimes you guys really were good for a laugh. Do you have any idea how hard it is to choke back giggles when some guy with a second-rate education and third-rate mind accidentally picks up an Ayn Rand book and starts raving about how an embarrassing piece of middle-brow claptrap is actually great literature.

Cross our hearts: We really will understand if you don’t go gently. In fact, if you can’t leave the stage without a little acting out, go for it. Snap some towels, treat a few gardeners and housekeepers and waiters with arrogance. In fact, tell as many jokes ridiculing gay people and minorities as you can remember. Let those ethnic epithets fly. It’ll feel good.

Just know that the list of white male privileges in your nightstand, the one that includes the item promising that “no terrified politician will ever dare mention the word “tax” in your presence,” is being ( how to put this politely?) edited.

Seriously, if any of you have some time on your hands, I do need someone to mow my lawn, what with all the time my friends and I are spending deciding which item on your privilege list will be the next to go. We haven’t decided yet, but you deserve to at least be warned that we are leaning toward one you really like, you know the one where you get paid more than women for doing the same job?

Sorry.