The Exquisite Pain Of The Dwindling Bourgeosie Spreads To Willamette Week

The double-edged sword of modern times just keeps writing my blog posts for me.

For instance, a few posts ago, I mocked The Oregonian for their quaint, dear idea of what down-market means. I found it terribly, terribly dear ... in the way the mortal whistles as they pass the graveyard.

It shows a certain decadence amongst the decreasing members of the middle class that they regard some things ("staycations", economy packs, cheap beer and the like) as a big discovery when the underclass that supports them sees them as everyday life. It's like telling that awkward joke in the hopes of "identifying" with some "underpriviledged class" and makes them look, well, kinda silly.

I don't mean to take the piss out of them so much. It's tough in the newspaper biz these days. But its just kind of galling when you see people who voted for Republicans and waxed on their intellectual offal for years panic when the bill comes due and break their own arms patting themselves on the back for surviving so brilliantly when the shell game is a way of life for most everyone who hasn't even gotten their chances.

Nobody was ever poor before they were poor, you see. They're redefining poor. Poor people just ain't been doin' it right.

And that brings me to Willamette Week. I am very reluctant to kick someone when they're down (remember, they got layoffs and deep salary cuts very recently), but their latest interactive initiative just comes off as a little out of touch in the above ways, as well as simply cribbing something the New York Times is already doing.

Picturing the Recession is a call for readers to send in their photos of how everyone around them is coping. WW's version is called Shuttered Portland, and since people love being intarwebs-famous for at least two minutes, I'm guessing they'll get a good amount of photos (even though the NYT version already accepts photos from just about anybody), but the text punched the same buttons on me that The Oregonian's gently-condescending attempt at humor did.

Just because I'm an irritated curmudgeon, I'll cherry pick some rhetorical questions from the article and answer them, and maybe my point will become clear:

Are you playing Wii at home with friends instead of meeting them at bars? You can afford a Wii and friends? This is hard done by to you?

What’s in your refrigerator now? Leftovers, bargain buys from Food 4 Less, and stuff past its expiry. If we're feeling flush, we chill up some water (at the rate Portland bills us, it's pretty much a luxury anyway

What used to be there? See last question.

Has your favorite store closed? Food 4 Less? No, it's still open.

What’s become of it? It's gotten more crowded with middle-class people who never thought they'd be poor, and whose faces alternate between the self-congratulatory look of being brave enough to shop with the black, brown, and white proles and a momentary glaze of terror that maybe this isn't a temporary economic reset for them.

Is the store vacant? No.

If not, what moved in? See the answer two questions back, chump.

Okay, so I'm sour grapes and all, whatever. I never got the chances that some have gotten and all that, call me what you will. But this bizarre fascination with being Newly Poor and the strictly bourgeosie way of looking at it (by newsers that expect me to lend them crediblity) just sticks in my throat like a bone.

What I'd like to see from the news is more actual serious reporting on the deteriorating economy and the dwindling middle class (and consequently, the dwindling chances to become part of it) and more riding on the people pulling the levers to do the right thing and stop playing games, and less droll ironic commentary on what it's like to be poor these days.

I can save you a lot of tedious work.

Three words: being poor sucks. There. Your job's done for you.

I'm not saying you shouldn't take pix and send them to WW. Hell, why not? Sounds like fun anyway.

(Hat tip: Carla "The Unimpeachable" Axtman at BlueOregon)

Limbaugh Pwned By Republican LIstener Who's Had A Gutful

If you haven't heard this one yet, you need to. It's the story of a man forced to look in the mirror and recoiling at what he saw.

You know him as Rush Limbaugh. Add your own epithets.

Thank God, incidentally, for Media Matters for America. They need no introduction around the liberal noosphere, of course, but I mention them because they are heroes to me, if only because someone over there listens to Limbaugh so we don't have to.

That is one crappy job. Must be just below Assistant Crack Whore on the crappy jobs scale. But it's a public service to be sure.

Anyway, I just heard this on Malloy, But all the stuff is over at the Media Matters site, including a recording. The caller is someone named Charlie, who identifies himself as someone who votes conservative and didn't want to see Obama elected and who served in the Marines and the Army, and all of a sudden, apparently, he had a gutful of it all, and it centers on that thing we don't do, torture:

Thanks, Rush. Rush, listen, I voted Republican, and I didn't -- really didn't want to see Obama get in office. But, you know, Rush, you're one reason to blame for this
election, for the Republicans losing.

First of all, you kept harping about voting for Hillary. The second big issue is the
-- was the torture issue. I'm a veteran. We're not supposed to be torturing these people. This is not Nazi Germany, Red China, or North Korea. There's other ways of interrogating people, and you kept harping about it -- "It's OK," or "It's not really torture." And it was just more than waterboarding. Some of these prisoners were killed under torture.

And it just -- it was crazy for you to keep going on and on like Levin and Hannity and Hewitt. It's
like you're all brainwashed.

And my last comment is, no matter what Obama does, you will still criticize him because I believe you're brainwashed. You're just -- and I hate to say it -- but I think you're a brainwashed Nazi. Anyone who could believe in torture just  has got to be - there's got to be something wrong with them.

Yes, that's right. You just heard a Republican call Rush Limbaugh a brainwashed Nazi. It took several minutes for Rush to get back on his pins but he was never able to regain the initiative, so he ended the call and lept off the deep end into the river of de Nile:

Charles, Barack Obama is president of the United States today because of stupid, ignorant people who think like you do. You pose -- you and your ignorance are the most expensive commodity this country has. You think you know everything. You don't know diddly-squat.

You call me a Nazi? You call me somebody who supports torture and you want credibility on this program? You know, you're just plain embarrassing and ludicrous. But it doesn't surprise me that you're the kind of Republican that our last candidate attracted. Because you're no Republican at all based on what the hell you've said here.

When confronted with the truth of what he's done, Rush Limbaugh recoils in horror at it ... and projects it on the messenger. The mistake here would be to assume that Mr. Limbaugh holds only liberals or people who don't agree with him in contempt. He holds all his listeners in contempt. If he didn't he would hand out such intellectual offal.

Of course I didn't excerpt it all ... that'd just be rude of me. Go to Media Matters to read the whole thing and listen to the clip.

It's historic, in a way. There may well be no better exposition of the corruption that is Rush Limbaugh and exactly what he does when confronted with it. It deserves a listen. It deserves two listens.

You Can't Go To Europe Either? Damn.

(via) I can't afford to take a vacation any farther away from here than Salem. I'm certainly not going to Europe in the forseeable future.

So I'm totally feeling the Bush Admin Republicans who won't be going to Europe anytime soon. Seriously. Of course, I can't go because there's no money, honey. They can't go because it just wouldn't be a good idea, in the staying-out-of-international-jail way.

Just so you guise know, if you need ideas about how to take time off in America, I can help you there. Staycation? We just call that life around here.

And, no, it's not because I'm bitter that all the fomerly-prosperous people I see are breaking their arms patting themselves on the back in self-congratulation on discovering the joys of the "Staycation" when that's pretty much all the vacation I've ever known.

Okay, I lied just there. It is, in fact, because I am amazingly bitter about it. [Sam Kinison Primal Scream] Welcome to MY WORLD!!!! [/Sam Kinison Primal Scream]