We're Livin' In Some Future Where None Of This Has Happened Yet

"...Woke up Election Day, skies gunpowder and shades of gray
Beneath a dirty sun, I whistled my time away
Then just about sundown
You come walkin' through town
Your boot heels clickin'
Like the barrel of a pistol spinnin' 'round

Don't worry Darlin', now baby don't you fret
We're livin' in the future and none of this has happened yet
Don't worry Darlin', now baby don't you fret
We're livin' in the future and none of this has happened yet..."

"Living In The Future," by Bruce Springsteen



            I hate Ann Coulter.  Wait, let me catch you up. So, I’m a little behind since my “hiatus,” which just means my day job prevents me from writing when I really want to.  Bear with me.  I’ve had something to say to Ann Coulter for quite a while and just have to get it out of my system.  Context:  Coulter on Fox’s Hannity  discussing  Herman Cain firing up the GOP before he flamed out.  Cain was being exposed for extramarital affairs and sexual harassment, a witchy-bitchy excoriation from the evil Democrats, according to Coulter (too bad for her that it was true).  On Hannity she was asked why she thought Herman Cain was being attacked: 

“…Coulter brought things back to race, saying that some women had been quick to forgive Bill Clinton for his sexual transgressions, but were attacking Herman Cain. "If you are a conservative black, they will believe the most horrible sexualized fantasies of these uptight white feminists," she said.  Hannity wondered why liberals were, in his words, so "threatened" by Cain. Coulter was blunt in her response:

Our blacks are so much better than their blacks," she said, speaking of  Democrats.”

And, my Pop is bigger than your Pop.  OK?  Now, Ann, or, if you prefer, Missus Massa, maybe I’m not taking enough gingko, but I can swear we had that big war in the 1860s, the one that settled the question of slavery and saved our Union?  The one that led to the 13^th Amendment (abolishing slavery for all time), and the 14^th Amendment (giving freed slaves full rights, privileges, and immunities as U.S. citizens).  Yeah, Ann, out went that awful compromise in our Constitution—know that document?—the one where we first had to cater to the South by keeping taxes low and counting slaves as three-fifths of a human being to get the thing ratified?  You know, I just got an astounding idea that might be right up your alley:  maybe your folks in the GOP might like to make workers less than human.  Oh, I forgot, you already did.  Nevermind.   But hey, according to your rhetoric, none of this has happened yet, none of this has happened yet. The Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Movement, the end of segregation…but, I seem to be getting ahead of myself because, by the way you speak, I could swear I’m living in some future where none of this has happened yet; so, don’t worry darlin’, and don’t you fret, in your delusion, none of this has happened yet.  Man, if this is my dream, Martin Luther King Jr. would  just be thrilled.

And, Ann, if I’m scarring you out of your dream-state by showing the love to Lincoln, I will say this, before you get your panties in a twist—that is, if you remember those little aforementioned things as events that have actually happened, actually passed in the plain of Time where the lives of well respected others and I have lived:  yes, I know Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.  Only thing is, that party has changed so greatly that it now resembles the Democratic Party of today in matters of social justice.  Say what you will, Abe is mine, not yours, no way, no how.  Want to duke it out over this one?  Yeah, I can just see it now, a Democratic fundraiser, rubber chicken and all, and you, the Barbie doll—who is not aging well, I’ve got to tell you, honey; you should try some of the unregulated, fountain-of-youth skin creams out there—ok, and then there would be me, the Uptight White Feminist.  Place your bets, everyone.  Now, who you think gonna win that fight?  Ann, if I were you, I would bet on me.

A little Show-and-Tell, if you will:

                     

                                 Her…

  …or me…

…Kidding…

…This is me…in front, holding my friend's baby, with my beautiful girlfriend in the background…

Ok.  I have digressed.  Forgive me.  I just got carried away by the visuals.  If you know me, you know why.  And I really can’t stand the Barbie-Bitch.  Her new book is called, Demonic:  How The Liberal Mob Is Endangering America.  I don’t know, Ann.  I mean, I’m for heating oil for the poor, investment in state-of-the-art education for every child in America, healthcare and social security and affordable medicine for our elderly, protection of saved assets from corporate degenerates…Oooh, how demonic of me… 

Uh, Ann, you better get the hazmat suit ready.   “Our blacks ….” Really, now.  “Uptight white feminists.”  Really, now.    “…speaking of Democrats…”

Yeah.  Ok, Ann, let’s see.  AND, just for the record, we call black people African-Americans nowadays, and, uh, they're free--nobody owns them anymore, but since you set the rhetorical terms here, for the sake of rhetorical symmetry, I'll follow along; so, OUR AFRICAN-AMERICANS (just a sampling): 

Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Dred Scott, Sojourner Truth, Nat Turner-- who would be Democrats today; Marian Anderson, Mahalia Jackson, Rosa Parks, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin (who spent, “Time on Two Crosses,” the title of his autobiography, because he was African-American and gay), Medgar Evers, Mary McLeod Bethune, who founded the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls (now Bethune-Cookman College) in 1904, a leader in the black women's movement who served as president of the National Association of Colored Women, and worked as an adviser to FDR,  James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Ernest Green ,Elizabeth Eckford , Jefferson Thomas, Terrence Roberts, Carlotta Walls LaNier, Minnijean Brown, Gloria Ray Karlmark, Thelma Mothershed , and Melba Pattillo Beals –the underlined nicknamed “The Little Rock Nine,” who put to the test the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka Kansas Supreme Court decision, victoriously argued by Thurgood Marshall, leading to an end of the “separate but equal” laws by repealing the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling; Ernest Green was the first African American to graduate from Little Rock Central High School; Homer Plessy—plaintiff in that case;  Linda Brown, who is the “Brown” in the Supreme Court case that ended segregation; Barbara Jordan, Shirley Chisolm, Thurgood Marshall (1st African-American Supreme Court Justice), James Meredith (1^st African-American to enter the University of Mississippi, under National Guard),  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, Coretta Scott King, Fannie Lou Hamer, Andrew Young, John Lewis, Jesse Jackson, Patricia Roberts Harris, the first African American female cabinet member when she was appointed Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter, Alexis Herman—Secretary of Labor, appointed by President Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, Jr., Major Owens, Ron Brown, Ed Towns, Cornel West, Maxine Waters, Marian Wright Edelman, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama, Barack Obama, and many, many others.

            Now, Ann, honey, that “..uptight white feminist…” comment, well… ummm, I just can’t let it go.  I feel this compulsion to just fuck you up.  I mean, that and the our-blacks-are-better-than-your-blacks comment.  That kind of rhetoric gets me going.  Gets me fired up.  You want to see me go “demonic” on you, sweetie?  Want to come here and pull my pants down?  Ooooh, would I love that, you have no idea. The Democratic National Committee is getting a copy of this, to be sure. SO, back to cogent argument:  Without feminists, darlin’, you would not have a voice, no matter how excruciating it is to hear; without feminists you would not have your lucrative book deal; without feminists…you know what?  I don’t like you.  I’m not gonna make a list of my dislikes—it would take up too much of my precious time. 

       You call me and mine Uptight White Feminists.  Well, we have some African-American, Latina, and Asian sisters, too. And that’s an understatement.  And they are pissed not to have been included.  And, if you ever want to spar, I’m ready for ya.  See, I figure it won’t take much to reduce you to doll parts.  Because that is what you are: doll eyes, doll mouth, doll legs, doll arms, dog bait, you want to be the girl with the most cake…and yeah, they really want you, they really want you, white girl, in the GOP.  I’m gonna invite Courtney Love, and ALL our Uptight Feminist sisters to our match, if you take me up on the offer.

Your boot-heels, darlin’, might click like the barrel of a pistol spinning ‘round, but, my boots were made for walking, and one these days--I think today, in fact--they’re gonna walk all over you.  Yeah, I think I’ll start a-steppin’ here…see, darlin', the future waits for no one...and you can just eat my dust.

...I guess I'm back...