I used to write about culture in my journal to speak my mind about the things that are going on the world, and voice my opinion about them. But more than that, I wanted to capture a truthful voice, so that when all was said and done, my opinion would merge with fact. That’s not always the way it’s been, but I’d like to at least attempt that again. I may be asking of myself a total impossibility.
For starters, I think I need to write about things when they happen, such as my thoughts when Whitney Houston died. I wrote about that, and included it with the month of February in my journal, even before I wrote this for what happened in January! It doesn’t always have to be my thoughts about a major news story happening at the time (though that doesn’t hurt). It could be just my thoughts on modern culture, such as this very passage.
For months, possibly years, my writings in my journal about culture and the news has been sort of a dumping ground. I never worried too much about because, since I wasn’t blogging, nobody was reading it. (And now that I am blogging, I still don't think anyone is really reading it!) It got to a point where I wasn't writing about this stuff while it was happening, and so I was starting to forget about the facts when it came time to write about how I felt about it all. I end up just putting up a few headlines about what happened in the news and included a few relevant political cartoons… and sure, I like the cartoons, but it’s a cop out. It’s a way to shorten my section on culture when I’m pressed for time and it's now a month after the fact, and I can’t remember all the stories, let alone the names and dates (which aren’t as important anyway as what the stories themselves might mean to the world and to me). My section on movies is always so much larger. I guess one can see where my head is at! I need to get back to just writing about anything that might be on my mind about the news or culture, regardless of what information I might have culled (though it might help if I try to write about these news stories as they happen, such as I did with the death of Whitney Houston).
Also, there are so many opinions, and opinions about other people’s opinions, and quite a lot of those opinions are filled with hate. Can I honestly say that my opinions are more viable just because they are mine, or aren’t laced with venom?
I saw a news story recently of a teenage boy who quit his choir in Grand Junction, Colorado because they were singing the song “Zkir” (referring to an Islamic devotional act, according to Wikipedia) from the movie Slumdog Millionaire, written by the Indian composer A.R. Rahman, which, when translated, contains the lyric “There is no truth but Allah”. The kid, being a Christian, didn’t want to sing lyrics that give praise to another God. The Bible teaches that we are not to do this, and it is quite understandable. I support this kid, because, quite frankly, being Christian, I wouldn’t want to do it either. In my eyes, it would be the same as being invited into a Buddist Temple and told to bow in reverence. One Christian contestant on an episode of Survivor several years ago refused to do just that. As an American and a Christian, this is their right, and being a Christian, I am the same. But we must ask, is it right? In this grand cultural landscape of the world, with all these other nationalities, should we have such a problem with it? In the same news story about the kid refusing to sing praise to Allah, a Muslim was interviewed, and he talked about how Allah translates as “God,” and how the same God that Jesus prayed to was the same God that Moses loved, and that Mohamed followed, and that this boy certainly has a right as a free American to refuse to sing a song with lyrics about Allah if he truly believes Allah is not the same Christian God, but how they are, in fact, the same. It’s certainly an interesting thought, but it's not what the Bible teaches, and if they are the same, then why is there such animosity and hate and war between these religions? If they are the same, why can’t the Muslim be a friend to the Christian, on a national level, since they apparently worship the same God, according to this Muslim who was interviewed? Do they really believe this themselves? If so, why has there been such a division between Muslims and Christians from the moment Mohammed started the Islamic religion more than a thousand years ago?
I’ve seen extremely hateful comments on the internet lately from non-whites explaining how the whites will never understand the plight of the colored people in America. That may be true, but if you ask me, I think these same people hold a grudge they perhaps shouldn’t hold. I don’t think this is how Martin Luther King Jr. would be acting if he were alive today. These internet bloggers and commentators have hate in their hearts, and that’s not the goal of America, is it? In my eyes, it’s just another opportunity to put America down when, in fact, this same kind of thing has afflicted every single country since man has walked the earth, and often more viciously and brutally than it has here. And it’s still going on today! At least in America, people can speak their minds. The Constitution affords them that freedom (though occasionally, the ACLU will get in the way). That’s not the same in many other countries today, where you can be put to death for speaking your opinion, or forced into “re-education” camps. Ask any North Korean who didn’t attend Kim Jong Il’s funeral, or didn’t cry at his funeral, or didn’t cry convincingly at his funeral. I've seen some recent and shocking news stories about this. And there may still be racism here, but it’s not what it once was. I was just watching the movie Joyful Noise (which, by the way, only garnered a 34% Tomatometer rating on the Rotten Tomatoes site), and it’s a movie that would not have been made just 40 years ago, maybe even 30 years ago, and one of the things I kept thinking while watching it was how Martin Luther King Jr. would have loved seeing something like this, with white and black characters living together and loving each other as friends and neighbors. It’s all over the place if you choose to look for it, in real life and in our entertainments. I have worked alongside all kinds of people, both men and women, black and white, Hispanic and Asian, people with different religious beliefs, and people who are sick, healthy, young, old, short, tall, gay, straight, ugly, pretty, thin, fat, single, married, loud, quiet, liberal, conservative, carefree, reserved, long haired, short haired, low class, high class, low income, high income, scruffy and tattooed, buttoned down and straight-laced, and some of them I’ve called friends, and some of them I haven’t, but it all had to do with their personalities and how friendly they were, and not by the color of their skin or what they look like or even what they choose to believe, and that’s as it should be.
In television and movies, I’ve noticed fictional black and white characters and people of other nationalities working and living alongside each other. Think of just about any TV show and you’ll see it over and over again these days. The judges on American Idol, from Simon, Paula, and Randy all the way to Ellen Degeneres and now Randy, Jennifer Lopez, and Steven Tyler, and all the contestants that they’ve had, is, I think, a reflection of today’s society. Even my cherished Star Trek is a reflection of this, starting way back in the 1960’s with a bridge crew that included Asian and Russian nationalities and a black woman, almost unheard of back then, and when Nichelle Nichols decided to leave the show, it was Martin Luther King Jr. himself who talked her out of it. Stretching it even further, it also included an alien, and at least one show examined the prejudice that still existed for non-humans. Later shows had women in positions of authority, a myriad of nationalities and skin colors, and aliens galore. The Vulcan catchphrase supports this concept: “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.”
I think MLK, for the most part, would love to see the America we’ve become, with a black president, and Oprah Winfrey, and “little black boys and girls… holding hands with little white boys and girls.” It’s not what it was when he was alive. We still have some growing to do, but I believe we have arrived at a level Martin Luther King Jr. would be proud to see, but there is still all this hate on the internet with people hating other people because of the color of their skin, whether it’s white people hating blacks or, more common these days, black people hating whites because they just don’t understand all the things their "people" (translation: anscestors) have had to suffer. Well, if you want to know the truth, I don’t think a lot of these internet haters can quite appreciate that they have it better than their parents and grandparents did. Some can, but definitely not these haters on the internet. To put it another way, these internet haters are, if anything, part of the ongoing problem, and not part of the solution. There are no answers in hate.
And yet, my opinion isn’t necessarily the right opinion simply because it’s mine, and I must ask if these internet haters, as uncomfortable as they may be, might not have a valid point to make. I’m sure there are quite a few things I can’t understand about them and what they’ve had to suffer. But if it’s anything like the pure, unadulterated hatred I feel coming off those internet rants, then maybe I can! I shudder to think what might happen if these kinds of people got real power against those they hate so much! Would they practice the same love and compassion for us that they expect us to have for them?
But do their arguments hold water? For that, since I’m not really ethnic myself (most of my ancestors were from white European countries like France, Germany, England, Ireland, and the Netherlands) I must turn to some of the right-wing political commentators who are ethnic, such as Michelle Malkin, Dinesh D’Souza, Jeff Jacoby (who is Jewish), and particularly Thomas Sowell and Larry Elder, as black conservatives. They bring a different view to the arguments born out by the internet haters. Larry Elder’s latest column is titled “Whitney Houston Critics Called Her ‘Too White’ – Black Republicans Can Relate”. From them, we see all these arguments from yet another perspective. I bet Condoleezza Rice would have quite a few stories to tell as George W. Bush’s Secretary of State, and all the liberal hate that goes with it!
It can all get so confusing, especially if a person doesn’t have ethics of their own. I like seeing arguments like this from all sides and all issues, but the water can get cloudy… and it can get rather sticky! The political right knocks the political left, and the political left knocks the political right, and the libertarians get caught in the middle, and even Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are mudslinging against each other to win the Republican Presidential nomination, and the liberals are supporting Rick Santorum to win (same as I do, actually) since they probably think he can’t win against Obama, and all of this fighting gets rather vicious! I don’t even know these people making comments on the internet (most often with atrocious spelling and grammar). Should I pay them any mind? Should I just dismiss them? Do they have any merit? Is my new blog yet just another voice in the fray, or does it have merit too? After all, at the very least, it is another opinion in an internet blogosphere choked with opinions, and opinions about other opinions!
And yet, ultimately, that’s not what I want. I want my blog, and the words that I write, to have meaning, and more meaning than the trite hate and filthy language passing back and forth on the internet by the haters. I want it to speak truth, yet wonder what is truth anymore in the middle of all of these millions of opinions?
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