In the Absence of Profundity...WTF

After such a long absence from these pages, I feel an obligation to say something profound. Hmm...well...um...sorry, nothing comes to mind. I've been working a lot of 10 to 12 hour days and that kind of work schedule sort of saps your profundity gene.

There have been so many things that have caught my attention during this month of blog-silence, things that have made me mutter WTF as if it were some ritual chant. Regrettably, most of them have faded from my memory, although there are a few standouts.

There is the young woman who went to school without her underwear on the day that pictures for the yearbook were being taken. Sitting on the front row of the bleachers for a shot with her fellow members of some club, she became upset when the yearbook was published, feeling that she had inadvertently flashed the camera. The young woman and her mother made much ado about the photograph, demanding that the school recall all of the yearbooks. The school declined to do so, insisting that the picture didn't reveal anything and much ado was being made about what was no more than an innocent shadow on the image. The mother and the daughter were all over the news, making certain that those of us who didn't have access to the yearbook knew all about the daughter's faulty memory. Why else would you put on a short skirt and neglect to add underwear, except you forgot?

Then there is the husband who decided to fulfill his sexual fantasy of watching his wife with another man, but neglected to include his wife in the planning of the event. Instead, he hired some guy to pretend to break into his home and pretend to rape his wife. Oh wait, if she wasn't in on the plan, maybe pretend isn't the right word. The wife called the police and her husband was placed in a non-pretend jail cell. I hope that the next stop will be divorce court.

These stories are just small potatoes in the WTF competition compared to the ongoing attack on Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. Among the nonsense spouted by conservative pundits has been comparing her membership in the National Council of La Raza to membership in the KKK. La Raza is a private, non-profit, and non-partisan organization focused on reducing poverty and discrimination, and improving opportunities, for Hispanic Americans. It's difficult to believe that any rational, thinking individual could equate an organization like La Raza with the KKK. Until La Raza starts burning crosses in the yards of non-Hispanic people, not allowing them to live in their neighborhoods, bombing their churches, and advocating for a complete denial of rights based on skin color, then it equals the Klan about as much as night equals day. Don't waste my time or yours sputtering about why do Hispanic people or other ethnic and/or racial minorities in this country need special organizations. It's really very simple. No, I'm not going to explain it to you. I've written about racial discrimination way too many times in this blog. If you don't get it by now, you're hopeless. Besides, I've reached a place in my beliefs where I no longer consider it my responsibility or the responsibility of any person of color to explain to the majority about racism, discrimination or prejudice. Work it out amongst yourselves. I'm in a tough love phase.

There are countless advocacy groups in this country that La Raza parallels: the League of Women Voters, the NAACP, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, AARP, The ARC of the United States, etc. I don't believe that the spouters of this garbage about Judge Sotomayor or La Raza believe it. They speak out of fear. This country is actually moving forward on matters of race, beginning to recognize that the bigotry of the past has no place in the 21st century. My message to Limbaugh and his dittoheads: get over it and find some real issues to focus on, like homelessness, poverty, genocide, famine, war....