president barak obama -- goddam!

[prof_pangaea]

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

fuck the marxist muslim nigger...NOBAMA

[elliptic-eye.livejournal.com]

What do you call a black man in a suit, Mousie? Try this out: "Mr. President."

[livii.livejournal.com]

Ooh, the young Biden is HAWT. I never knew!

ALSO DUN JINX IT PLS. OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD. SO ANXIOUS.

[ninegal.livejournal.com]

I sure hope it's going that way.
Part of me's afraid though that people lied in the polls, too cowardly to admit they're not ready yet to accept something else but a white male president.
This is all looking too good.

I came across this a while ago and it pretty much sums it up
http://www.resistcomfort.com/votetheissues/

Oh well. For me... I hope I'll wake up tomorrow to see that the optimistic me was right for once ;)

[kels.livejournal.com]

I voted just 20 minutes ago! And yes, I chose Obama. :)

[kels.livejournal.com]

I have a ridiculous story for you, by the way.

As I was sitting in the waiting room at my doctor's office yesterday, I overheard two men talking about the election. I wasn't really paying attention until of of them said quite clearly "We already got a WHITE house, we don't need a BLACK house!" Oh man, it was all I could do not to say something.

[snorkmaiden.livejournal.com]

Posting hate speech behind an anonymous address only kills your arguments. If you want to talk about politics, do so with your face. This is a democracy. We talk.

[bakadragon.livejournal.com]

I think I would have LOLd, to the point of making him extremely uncomfortable in the realization that I was not laughing at his joke.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

oh if only he really was a marxist muslim. that would have been even more exciting. ;___;

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

how did i even get a racist troll in the first place? i update like once a month! craziness, i say.

thankfully (?) canvassing had me talking to much crazier racists face to face at their own homes, so i am experienced with the wankery. this was pretty weak, to be honest.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

*hugs you*

you just tried to reason with an anonymous racist troll. i know the temptation to do so, but don't give in! it will never ever work.

anyway, we should have sympathy. imagine being that lame and ignorant at a time like this! so sad.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

AH DID NOT JINX IT SEE? IT WAS ALL TRUFAX.

WOOT

[snorkmaiden.livejournal.com]

::hugs::

I know. I just... I've been on edge? :D

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

oh, i'm sure there was definite bradley effect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_effect) going on yesterday (for example, polls in georgia on monday had mccain just a few points ahead, and then the next day he won by like twenty points or something). but thankfully there were even more people who really believed in change (or were just thinking, "wait a second... i'm going to vote for another republican when the current one has got the country this messed up? fuck that shit! *votes obama*")

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

i have a nicer one. i was talking to a 92 year-old guy when i was canvassing. i asked him what he thought were the most important issues facing the country and he said, "well, not anything, really. i'm so old, i don't worry about anything." i asked him if he was going to vote then, and he said yes, and when i asked who he was going to vote for he said, "oh, i'm going to vote for the coloured fellow." :D

dude, that guy was 32 when strom thurmond was running as a dixiecrat. we are in such a different place now, as a nation. amazing.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

i was remembering when i tried to bring reason into a wanky argument with a troll on who_anon and then suddenly thought, "WTF? why did i just do that? *facepalm*"

now you can be on plushy pillows of comfort and niceness! the country has just rounded a corner, taken a step forward, and some other appropriate metaphor. hurrah!

[snorkmaiden.livejournal.com]

I've been doing cold calls for Obama for a month now. You'd think by now I'd known that there is NO WAY for me to reason with these people. I mean really. I had a lady tell me that the polls had closed and she voted for the white dude already.

[kels.livejournal.com]

that is an adorable story!

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

i was campaigning door to door for the past month and a half and talked to some hilariously racist folks. i had a guy who, when asked who he might be voting for, answer, "the AMERICAN!!!!" and then go onto a long, rambling racist screed about how obama was really a foreign muslim who studied with terrorists in sudan. "if he's really american why won't he show us his birth certificate?! i just saw it all on the CBS news!" okay!

[snorkmaiden.livejournal.com]

You should message me. :D

[thebarebones.livejournal.com]

HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY

This is Emily with a new livejournal and I added you on awhile ago.
Did you ever get the postcard I sent or are you in Chicago now?

I'm here on a farm with JENNY and it is G R E A T.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

dude, you are on jenny's farm? which i know isn't jenny's but i still think of it as such. THAT IS AWESOME. i did get your postcard and it was GREAT, especially since life had been, er, sucking pretty hard when i got it. i will have to go through old emails to find the phone number for the place, because i thought i saved it but apparently i didn't. or maybe i did but then i lost it when i had to get a new phone after tim and i broke up? i dunno.

i am still in milwaukee and things are not great but they are less bad and i am looking forward to them being great in the future. now i will go and add you to mah friends-list and we will be VIRTUAL FRIENDS. hurrah!

[surexit.livejournal.com]

lizbee's entry is gone? So in response to your comment, my long-arse comment.

'Yob' is slightly different, because it isn't quite so pointedly classist, and it very specifically describes a type of behaviour, rather than being as vague and yet horribly specific (i.e., people say it's vague because they don't want to acknowledge that it mostly means 'walking or loitering while being working-class') as 'chav'. Like, my brother (I am upper-middle, very much so) could be a 'yob'.

Also, in response to america has its equivalents, one of the things that makes 'chav' so poisonous is how much it is tied to the truly incomprehensible to outsiders English class system. In America, as far as I've been able to observe, you are much more matter-of-fact about class, and class is much more based just on wealth (I have mostly observed this from Americans saying things that make me go, "WAIT, what the FUCK?" before realising that they're just using words differently - Obama's 'tax cuts for the middle class' is an excellent example, because that would cause RIOTS over here, whereas in the States it seems to have just been a straightforward "I will give tax cuts to this specific income group" statement.) whereas here, the people who are calling other people chavs and the people who are being called chavs? They will never change places in their lifetime. Ever. Oh, they might get respectively richer or poorer, but they will stay the same class. If someone tries to feign being middle-class but is actually working-class, they will be class traitors and if vice versa, they will be pathetic wannabes.

Long comment is long, because issue is complicated and also interesting.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

yeah, yob is more behavioural, with the understanding that the behaviour makes a person "seem" lower class, pikey has old-timey racist overtones to go with the classism, chav is more classist with just that whif of racism attached. i don't know how prevalent a concept that is in the UK, but here there is a lot of derision for "wiggers" (or other "race traitors"), which middle class people love because they get to hate on many of the cultural indicators of black americans while not having to sully their hands with "actual" racism, since they're talking about white people, not black people! i get a similar vibe from the usage of chav, and making fun of bling and tracksuits and listening to "urban" music and being on the dole and such.

to be more precise, i should have said something like "vague equivalents" -- ie, they serve a similar purpose of reinforcing white middle class values, culture and style, but of course that would be in the context of the american middle class and not the british. which is also why our classist insults are not nearly as nasty, because our class system is indeed much more dependent upon how much money you make, as opposed to what section of the populace you were born in (but not entirely independent of such concerns, as the many american stories, movies, and tv shows of ignorant poor people striking it rich, and then behaving hilariously lower class will attest to).

meanwhile obama and every other politician ever can talk about tax cuts for the middle class because here in american EVERYONE considers themselves middle class, whether they earn $18,000 a year or half a million. it's because we don't have a conception of "working class", just lower, middle, upper. no one wants to be lower-class (ie living in abject poverty), and no one wants to be upper class (ie elitist) so it's middle class for everyone. and there is definitely an upper crust elite here in the states, with the rockefellers, vanderbilts, and other WASP families who have held a lot of political power and financial power in this country since before it declared independence, but americans like to believe in the myth that everyone is middle class and ignore the fact that people from the same families keep ending up as presidents, senators, supreme court judges, ceo's of large important corporations, etc.

[surexit.livejournal.com]

I NEVER THOUGHT OF THE RACISM ANGLE. Yes, man, exactly! It's the same cultural indicators!

It cuts both ways, as well. Normally I would never say that about racism because it obviously doesn't, but I think this is one case where a particular behavioural pattern is judged more harshly in white kids than in black kids, possibly because of unconsciously racist thought patterns where the standard for white kids is higher? Hmmm, I don't know.

I do know that the white working-class in this country is underperforming educationally more and more each year, particularly the boys, and shit like 'chav' doesn't help. At the moment, society is failing them, more than it's failing any other group, and it makes me really fucking angry.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

I NEVER THOUGHT OF THE RACISM ANGLE. Yes, man, exactly! It's the same cultural indicators!

ah, racism. underpinning western society and culture since forever.

It cuts both ways, as well. Normally I would never say that about racism because it obviously doesn't, but I think this is one case where a particular behavioural pattern is judged more harshly in white kids than in black kids, possibly because of unconsciously racist thought patterns where the standard for white kids is higher?

i think it is just a more complex cut, and actually even more offensive for it. "jimmy, i expected MORE of you. i mean, you're white." ugh.

I do know that the white working-class in this country is underperforming educationally more and more each year, particularly the boys, and shit like 'chav' doesn't help.

i was lucky, because even though i came from a lower-class home, i looked like i was just an awkward kid who wore wildlife t-shirts and glasses. okay, cheap glasses and the same clothes all the time, but still. my sisters didn't have these indicators and were consistently tracked into average classes, not even given the option of "hey, there are advanced classes in these subjects. what kinds of things are you interested in? what would you like to study? if you do this and this then you'll be able to get into these classes." fuck, even *i* almost didn't get to take the SATs because no one gave a shit about making sure kids were signed up for them, and i didn't have the money for it. (yes, they make you pay for a test you need to take in order to get into any university or technical college), and i graduated third in my class. thankfully one of my teachers found out the day before the test and got the high school to pay for me somehow.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

dang, hit post too soon!

anyway, was going to close up with a round of YES, society needs to not be making fun of people for being poor and uneducated, it needs to try and actually do something about it.

[surexit.livejournal.com]

Yes, I wrote the 'it cuts both ways' and then followed my thought-pattern through to make it actually only cut one way, as racism normally does, but didn't go back and edit. This is why my essays are sometimes a little confused. :D

White working-class boys are now underperforming every other group educationally in the UK, and we think publicly mocking them is going to help? AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH.

[prof-pangaea.livejournal.com]

and we think publicly mocking them is going to help?

isn't this the basis of most conservative political thought? "you did something that the straight white male middle class has found unacceptable for some reason! now we will PUNISH YOU, without addressing the underlying issues. this will teach you a lesson somehow, even though that's not how education or indeed logic works."