Race Relations, I Guess

No serious developments this week, so I thought I'll go ahead and continue my Enemies List. First up...

Pat Robertson, Rush Limbaugh, et al.
Wow. Thanks for making it easy and super hip to be a white Christian Republican, guys.
Which sort of brings me to the next one...

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
In addition to being my political enemy, Umar holds the distinguished position of being my actual enemy as well, since, you know, he tried to murder me. "But" you say, "you could have chosen any of the world's hilariously failed terrorists for this list!" True, but Umar is responsible for building so many bridges between Muslims/non-Muslims and black people/everyone else. Like the above gentlemen, Mr. Abdulmutallab has deliberately dedicated himself to making life unbearable for people of his same background. At any given moment, there's a Muslim American thinking to himself "It sure is great that when people hear my last name they think my first and only instinct is to just run at the nearest airplane and blow it up. That's marketable. That will land me a high-power job and a supermodel wife." Thanks to Umar and his compatriots, there's only one Muslim in the media that the West is comfortable with seeing, and that's probably only because he's played by an Indian.

Also, you've no doubt heard that Mr. Abdulmutallab is from Nigeria, a nation known for its urgent business propositions and general success, as evidenced by the fact that it spends most of its time blowing up 80% of its own GDP. So the fact that his pantsbomb failed actually furthers another stereotype - that of ineptitude. Don't believe such a stereotype exists? Let's try a little experiment. Which of the following headlines would be more shocking to you:

NIGERIAN DESTROYS OWN GENITALS IN BOMB BLUNDER
NIGERIAN MARTYR MASTERMINDS TERROR ATTACK

That's what I thought. Racist. Speaking of which, I don't care much for Chris Rock either.

An Easy Start

As of now, the Obama Challenge is officially live again. Some of you may have anticipated that this rebirth would explode the innernetz with bold proclamations and excitement for the coming spring (or, as it's called here in New England, winter), but that's just not how I roll. I'm going to ease back into things here, as opposed to abruptly introducing some confusing, unforeseeable new conflict before resolving it a month later. (Catch the Lost season premiere tomorrow night at 9/8 central on ABC!)

But I've been away for a while, and as with any martial arts superstar returning to a throne he once abdicated, my first order of business is clear: I need to compile a list of my enemies.


The State of California
We've all somehow suffered through a transcendentally obnoxious wave of Calocentrism for a couple of decades (Catch the next episode of Weeds on Showtime!), and it's really time to say "enough." Yes, I've been to the Golden State. Yes, to the good parts, too. And it is, admittedly, unique and thoroughly enjoyable, but only in that you-go-out-to-the-new-bar/club-with-your-friends-and-buy-a-few-rounds-of-shots-without-knowing-they're-$11-each-and-then-you're-pissed-and-tired-and-pretty-sure-the-urinal-in-the-restroom-wasn't-properly-installed-because-that-looks-like-fine-urine-mist-on-your-shoes-and-pants-and-you-have-no-shot-at-getting-laid-because-lets-face-it-no-one-in-this-bar-is-datable-and-you-want-to-leave-but-everyone-wants-to-hit-up-the-after-hours-joint-so-you-go-back-home-alone-and-take-a-cab-and-the-driver-is-Hatian-and-of-course-gyps-you-and-takes-you-the-long-way-even-after-you-protest-so-three-hours-of-drinking-and-talking-costs-easily-into-the-triple-digits way. Or to put it simply, California's assets are VASTLY outweighed by its liabilities.

The place is riddled with homeless. And not the kind that justify pity. These are the snooty, ungrateful homeless that are, as far as I can tell, unique to the region. What follows is a play in one act recounting (verbatim) an encounter between my father and a homeless woman about a block away from the Biltmore Grand in downtown LA:

[Enter FATHER and HOBO, walking severally.]
Hobo: Sir, can you give me some money?
Father: Sorry, no I can't.
Hobo: Come on, man!
Father: I can't spare anything, I'm sorry.
Hobo: Give me about five dollars.
Father [stopping in his tracks]: I'm not doing that!
Hobo: Come on, mister!
Father: Get away from me. I don't want anything to do with you.
[Exeunt omnes.]

Only in California would you find such an outright breach of hobo etiquette. No manners - not so much as a "please" (or preferably a "beggin' your pardon, milord"*) followed by an outright demand for a government bailout, by panhandling standards. I don't even give my friends that kind of cash free and clear, mainly because naked demands for money don't occur in real life. I mean, when I spot my friends cash, at the very least I get the promise "I'll buy you a beer later!", however illusory that is. But no - nothing here. There's no consideration at all - the hobo played no instrument, danced no number, and displayed no hilarious sharpie-scrawled hobo joke on a cardboard scrap.

Item #2: Money. California, mid-century mecca of prosperity and the nation's most populous state, has none of it. The state government, having imposed a tax burden that's what, the fourth highest in the country, is completely broke. It suspended state income tax returns, which I didn't know was constitutional. It tried to pay off obligations in I.O.U.'s. It's so far in the red that it is now cheaper to insure bonds issued by the government of Kazakhstan than it is municipal bonds issued by California. You know what happens if I try to pull any of this in the real world? Neither do I, because I'm not high enough off my ass from secondary weed smoke and self-satisfaction to try it. But if I did, I'm fairly positive that the consequences would start with eviction and somehow lead to my incarceration in a 19th-century debtor's prison.

Item #3: Tyranny. Remember 2008? When there weren't jobs because we all thought it was a stellar idea to invest scads of cash in the notion that people with no assets and prospects could pay down colossal mortgages that were never designed to be paid down anyway? Well not only were a lot of those homes built in California (another scrap of proof of the state's complicity in the conspiracy to destroy me), but while everyone was downsizing and doing more with less, California's government...wasn't. There's nothing quite like boosting the taxpayer-funded payroll by 3600 jobs to crush the hopes and dreams of your out-of-work proletariat. The state knows where this money comes from, right? Typically, I stop hiring people when I'm broke. I mean, imagine that you're out of work. Wait...it's 2010. Ok, so you're out of work. And now you just hired a gardener and a maid. Have fun in small claims court!

Item #4: Fire. God Almighty, just turn it off for a second. Yeah, yeah, yeah, at any given moment 50% of the state is on fire. We're all REALLY impressed. This is a phenomenon I've never understood. Once or twice a year, a blaze mysteriously appears somewhere in that kindle-heap of a state and destroys a few peoples' McMansions**, and this somehow gets plastered on CNN and passes for national news. I don't get it. I mean, when the snow melts every March (or June in New England), you don't flip over to Fox News to hear an urgent, breaking story about how these solid flecks of ice are turning into water. (Not that you should flip over to Fox News under any circumstances.) My response for California's cry-for-attention-masked-as-national-emergency? Buy insurance and get over it. In case you haven't heard, you invented this thing called "global warming", and it really doesn't help that you're pumping tons of black, unbreathable smoke into the atmosphere and destroying millions of acres of pristine habitat while doing so. Thanks.

I'm calling you out, Golden State. More additions to the list shortly...

* - To the homeless who are not reading this because it isn't a price tag on Hurricane malt liquor: saying the above in a British accent when asking for a handout will guarantee you foldin' money from yours truly.
** - The upside for this year? There's absolutely no chance that anyone will be killed and injured in this year's wildfires, since these homes have now been abandoned through the life-saving power of foreclosure.