I'm so old that when politically correct first entered the public discourse, I interpreted it -- maybe wrongly!? -- as just not treating non-honkies worse just because they weren't honkies. In other words, just civil behavior and little more. Then conservatives grabbed the term and turned it into some nightmare version divorced from any reality other than using it to excite their cohort.
Likewise, more or less, woke. I mean, that there should be any issue that having a clue how things actually work is any sort of issue other than the possibility of people being better able to recognize bullshit...
I dunno, just my contempt for the fuckers is absolute. [More contemptuous remarked deleted in the name of good taste.]
I think that around the time that Bill Maher started his "Politically Incorrect" show, PC started becoming synonymous with "censorship of right-wing ideology (aka bullshit)," which, of course, mutated into the "cancel culture" of today. Just like "woke" started out as a term that Black people used, to remind each other to remain vigilant about the racism inherent in the system, and now means whatever conservatives don't like (but basically just means treating Black people, trans people, and other marginalized groups as human beings, which they can't say out loud, and why they can't actually define "woke," because that would give the game away).
My feeble recollection is conservatives had perverted the term politically correct well before Maher’s show.
As for the definition of woke, it started just as being informed, knowing how things work. In conservatives’ perversion of the term, you may well be correct. Indeed, I’m sure for some of the fine people your definition is the operative one. But I also think there’s a huge cohort who genuinely don’t have clue because the people warning them about being woke don’t define it. So when comes to avoiding being woke, they’re not woke to what they’re opposed to.
Yeah, I think Woke has long had positive connotations within the black community, but politically correct has never been anything but an insult (unless maybe among Maoists?)
Circa 1988-9, I remember "politically correct" being used ironically by academics, other "woke" types. Then the right-wing bastards took it over at face value.
The culture war legislation being passed in red states is one of the most remarkable cases of “self-ghettoization” I’ve ever seen. Step One: create a retrograde societal hellhole. Step Two: ponder why those stuck up elites (anyone non-white, non-straight, or who doesn’t want to live in a 1950s diorama) won’t come to your state to live and work. Complain your state is being cancelled.
It’s like deliberately shooting yourself in the foot, then flinging the gun away from you and trying to assert it was really someone else who pulled the trigger.
Nah. The local overlords got their setup just like they want it, and no interference is contemplated or allowed. Small minds, small thoughts, small futures – good enough for them.
Disagree. They want the revenue generation and spending power we’d bring with us, with the proviso we adapt to their way of life and live by their rules and standards. When we decline, they get pissed off, call us woke elites, and complain they are being cancelled.
What I remember from my deep sociological research of watching In the Heat of the Night is that the richest man in town doesn't much cotton to becomin' the second-richest man in town, so keep that fac'try up in the Nawth, bless your heart.
Oh, it was, I saw a black man slap a white man, and a rich white man at that, and he was not immediately lynched, I only hope we can keep this away from The Children.
Which reminds me: To Sir With Love was banned in South Africa during apartheid. Now it has their equivalent of a G rating. It's gone from a movie no one was allowed to see to a movie anyone is allowed to see.
Remember, also, they initially didn't want an expert to help them solve the crime solely because he was *Black.*
And Lee Grant, as Mrs. Colbert (the dead man's wife): "What kind of people are you? What kind of place is this? My husband is dead! Somebody in this town killed him! I want you to find out who! Or I will pack up my husband's engineers, and leave you. . .to yourselves."
Bingo. The redneck gentry that run their towns and collectively run the state use their influence to keep out anything that would tighten the labor market and cause wages to rise. They will either hand off their business to one of their children or sell off the company and retire to Florida.
And it's not just getting people to come to your state. It's holding on to the ones who were raised there. Anyone with a little gumption can recognize they can do better.
Yes. Always amusing to listen to the grumps so aggrieved by contemplating how much money is piled up in the cities, without also considering that almost all of this country was once much more rural than it is now, and the urban agglomeration was due to rural folks following the money, which the remaining rurals seem clueless about.
Even the hellhole that is the military can get youngs outta there, tho many return, for whatever (probly lotsa) reasons...
Yeah, funny how Capitalism seems to prefer its customers all clumped together in close proximity instead of all spread out to hell and gone. Must be due to an infection by the Woke Mind Virus.
If conservatives ever succeed in killing off the Post Office, they’ll find out really fast how willing FedEx and UPS are to deliver a single package to North Ratsass. They’ll stick to the metro areas, and everybody in rural areas will go without their mail and their meds.
That’s one reason Minneapolis is a liberal/progressive bastion, despite having lots of whitebread suburbs and miles upon miles of farms beyond that: half the progressive kids from neighboring states like South Dakota move there after college.
Side question: I’ve seen people argue that it’s more energy efficient to live in a hot climate and use AC than in a cold climate and heat a house. Is that true? Is the same amount of energy needed to heat a house as to cool it? It seems like generating AC would use more energy, but I have no idea.
I would say it depends on the inside temperatures desired and the insulation and type of furnace/AC. It looks like a big factor is the temperature difference. If you keep your house at 70 F, an average summer temp of 85 is 15 degrees from your house temp. An average winter temp below 55 F would cost more to heat, assuming the efficiencies are the same.
That makes sense. I was just curious if the method of heating/cooling used more energy and wasn’t 1:1, all other things being equal. I saw a person arguing that AC in Phoenix was more economical than winter heating in Duluth, which seemed to be questionable—esp. if the AC is set to 68°, and as long as you don’t heat your house to 76°. But I had no formula to use.
This creates an interesting imbalance in their plans: either the state falls off the map as corporations refuse to expand there despite cheap land & pliable tax accomodations, OR those corporations start wielding their influence to steer these culture-war abominations back to the center.
The reason that the RW snarls so much about corporate "wokery" is that they know where the real power lies, and who makes them jump when they say jump. [I mean we all know how shallow most corporations' commit to DEI really is, but even they couldn't get employees to move to one of these Little Hungaries...]
Precisely. Corporations could not give one rat's fuck about DEI for the sake of justice or fairness. They want to attract educated, intelligent people. They know they can't do that effectively if they've got a Cletus in their C-Suite talking about "it's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" or waxing on about Black on Black crime. And they insist their lower-level staff attend DEI trainings for the sole purpose of insulating themselves from liability.
Well, Jesus - these are the assholes who've spent decades idolizing corporations and CEOs as the pinnacle of Western civilization and granting them ever more power, so if the monster now has its clammy hands around their necks, I'm strangely unmoved.
I spent some time in Oklahoma, mostly OK City, a couple years ago and was shocked at what a nice place it was. Really enjoyed kicking around the small towns and countryside as well. The voting majority are no doubt morons, but most people seemed okay. I read the other day that there are over 400 cannabis dispensaries in Oklahoma City. I can easily believe that since there were plenty of small neighborhoods that had more than the entire state of Illinois. Lots of nice murals as well, which seems to be a thing statewide.
I have heard lots of good things about OK City from people I trust, including a couple who live there, but the 400 dope houses suggests it takes a lotta tokin' to not feel broken, so I will hold off my full endorsement.
I bet Cyrus jumped at Gregg Lance's offer on their way out. 'The Gladys', not so sure if she got one...
Just a guess, but I imagine people in rural OK hate Oklahoma City for the "City" part despite the "Oklahoma" part. First, it's the state capitol, so it's home to the hated gummint, plus any LGBTQ folk who don't immediately get the fuck out of OK probably migrate there, also Black people. Somewhere outside Enid, a father is counseling his son, "Whatever you do, don't go into The City, you won't make it out alive."
Hell, my semi-rural dwelling sister is terrified of THE CITY, and probably wonders how I've spent years on the edge of the abyss. Meanwhile Rochester is, what, 300,000 people, and downtown rolls up the streets at 6pm.
Yea, but it’s so easy for residents to get a medical card that they probably voted against rec. Too bad you can’t upload photos to comments, I have one with a guy waving a placard at passing cars offering weed for $100 an ounce.
Never ceases to amaze: Voters approve of something "woke," then continue to vote in legilators and governors that are "anti-woke." What's the matter with Oklahoma?
And then you get the Democrats (if any) who run against them, and tend to be Republican-lite...so you get into the Harry S Truman conundrum: “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.”
The people of our state voted for medical and recreational cannabis a few years back, but the state government who Knows Better has been foot-dragging and killing those initiatives, respectively. But don’t worry; we’ll vote the same moralistic morons back to the legislature, or maybe find worse ones.
It'll get there. The graft hasn't made it's way to the right hands yet.
Once it get there, everybody needs to make sure Memaw's got her weed card. She gets in the habit of smoking an after dinner spliff before you know it she'll be watching Golden Girls on Me TV instead of Tucker because she's found Tucker harshes her Buzz.
Any of the allotment she doesn't smoke she can sell to her grandkids just like she used to do with the oxy. She'll go to the casino more often and the cat will get fat on Fancy Feast. Everybody wins!
Good point, I can see how if your business model depends on gettin' people really, really angry and then holding them at a rolling boil, legal weed could be seen as a threat.
Should mention that Reservation Dogs is a very good, sometimes great show that’s set in Oklahoma. And it is a state with a horrible racist past which probably isn’t buried too deep. Pawhuska, for example, has a bridge to Colored Town, but there’s nothing on the Colored Town side.
Ponca reminds me of the Ponca Hills in Omaha, where I spent many happy days cycling (the roads are brilliant). The place is a delightful refuge from the city, and has its own wacky eccentricities:
Poor Oklahoma, it's just a durn shame there ain't some business that could make money off the wind. But that's just some bird-killin' librul fantasy, never mind.
Back during the dust bowl, that was probably a popular joke out on the panhandle: "Man, if we could just sell all this wind, we'd be rich!" Now, sadly, the hated liberals have befouled the whole idea with their enthusiastic approval. This is why we (I mean they) can't have nice things.
Nah. Speakin' as a born/raised Californio, we don't give a rat's patoot about the land – we care only and exclusively about the water. Not that we take any from Arid Zona – we just hoard any that might be shared. Now, don't get me wrong, we do make some concessions for the good of the planet...just enough so that we can ignore any advice from any do-gooders. So the cactus ornamentals are a signifier of hipper-than-thou.
I’ve known several individuals from Oklahoma who are really good people. And like Idaho (!) it used to have a progressive streak a hundred years ago. Of course the median voter has changed a bit since then. When people are no longer dying in mine accidents or the Dust Bowl, they’re free to luxuriate in conservative tribalism.
Paramount+ has a series called Tulsa King, which features a pot dispensary as one of the money-makers Sylvester Stallone is adding to his organized crime kingdom. Good series. I was astonished when the first episode informed me that OKLAHOMA let pot be dispensed. I’m not keeping up.
The pot thing is ill-understood in its import. The cons see it as part of the states' rights movement – an example they will wave at the feds when states are ready to enforce mandatory bible study, criminalize speech and re-introduce separate-but-"equal" everything.
Wokelahoma! Where the citizens stick to their principles no matter what! Consider that, after tornadoes wiped out schools and killed schoolchildren two years in a row, Oklahomans made a statement by voting down bills that would have provided storm shelters in the schools. Sure, they're out children and all, but we're not paying even one thin dime more in taxes if that's what it takes to save them from being crushed under their schools!
I'm sure businesses around the country look at this sort of thing and think "Yea! My top execs would love to send their kids to such schools!"
The Fascists desire to suppress sex, whether heterosexual with abortion bans or gay with demonization of LGBTQ people, will mean major companies have to drag employees kicking and screaming into Red states, should they decide tax breaks matter more than retaining qualified workers. Clueless Fascists in Wisconsin can’t imagine why the state is losing out to Minnesota, Michigan and Illinois. I mean, wasn’t Right to Work going to save WI’s manufacturing? Hint: the fact you can toke up anywhere in the Midwest except WI isn’t the reason, it’s just a symptom of the troglodyte attitude of the state legislature. Meanwhile, if I lived in OK, I’d be baked 24/7 too.
Well, Our Dumb Senator think it's just fine that jobs move out of state, says we have too many jobs already and being able to leave one job and pick up another makes the workers uppity.
Great Piece! Now I'm wondering where you go to research Oklahoma menswear.
I worked for a giant wholesale nursery in Tahlequah, a town southeast. of Tulsa. Walmart Headquarters was an hour away their traditional big customer. The whole town had a greater Bentonville vibe.
The first time I visited the place I went with my boss. We flew into Tulsa, rented a car and headed south to the farm.
Just east of bum fuck we zigged when we should have zagged and took some kind of Wrong Turn. We were on some small two lane road off the state route. We went over a small hill, the road turned into dirt and then deadended into a ford across some creek.
Across the creek stood a Native American holding a chicken under each arm. I assume he was a Native American He had pigtails, a dark complexion and wore a Billy Jack hat. He was dressed in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. He smiled and nodded. I got the feeling he would have waved if he hadn't had chickens in his arms. My boss did a 3-point turn and we headed off back up over the hill to the present day. We never spoke of the incident.
Turns out my boss was right in the middle of one of those Dynasty style multi-generational feuds over control of a huge family business. The owner's two sons and their wives we're fighting for control of the company. The patriarch was in his late seventies so who was going to get what was a big issue. I never heard such stories. We were new faces so everywhere we went everybody pumped us for information and gave us their version of things. Treachery, greed, adultery and drug abuse. It was actually pretty cool to be around for that week. They all fought for a couple years and eventually had to bring in an Equity Group who ended up suing the shit out of everybody because the family stole so much. The nursery got sold and turned into an upscale Housing Development.
That's all I know about Oklahoma. I do know the words to that stupid song. We sang it in choir in junior high. I led a drunken rendition of it one night in the bar at the Tahlequah Holiday Inn .
Or, to bring it more local, naming your real estate development after the trees that were there until you cut them all down to build the subdivision...?
My 4th grade teacher of NJ history didn’t know what happened to the Lenape so we assumed they just “died out.” It was only a dozen years ago that I learned there is a Lenape nation in OK.
And this from the bottom of that article (left off Roy's post): "Pro Temp Treat says he will announce appointees, meeting dates, times and places at the later date."
Fine for the Right: when businesses go to a state with regressive government, it proves how bidness-friendly they be, when they don't, it proves how oppressed they be for their loyalty to RealAmerica™.
(See: 'G-D is in control!' xor 'Satan is the god of this world.'.)
Well, to be fair, I am not alone in both thinking that I'm lower than whale-shite and higher than G-d's hat. (Hint: if you're self-aggrandising enough to feel that you're capable of great things but haven't done any such, [EDIT] and just self-honest enough to know it,[/EDIT]it's easy to feel pretty low.)
As for enemies, another trope: someone was once clever enough to publish a litany including things like 'We are stoïc, they don’t feel pain the way we do/We are thrifty, they are miserly/….'.
Bravo, you should be writing movies and TV. I wish there were new American movies like this addressing labor/management, in the tradition of John Sayles, Ken Loach, Hal Ashby, Martin Ritt, ... If there are contemporary American equivalents I'd appreciate enlightenment.
I'm so old that when politically correct first entered the public discourse, I interpreted it -- maybe wrongly!? -- as just not treating non-honkies worse just because they weren't honkies. In other words, just civil behavior and little more. Then conservatives grabbed the term and turned it into some nightmare version divorced from any reality other than using it to excite their cohort.
Likewise, more or less, woke. I mean, that there should be any issue that having a clue how things actually work is any sort of issue other than the possibility of people being better able to recognize bullshit...
I dunno, just my contempt for the fuckers is absolute. [More contemptuous remarked deleted in the name of good taste.]
I think that around the time that Bill Maher started his "Politically Incorrect" show, PC started becoming synonymous with "censorship of right-wing ideology (aka bullshit)," which, of course, mutated into the "cancel culture" of today. Just like "woke" started out as a term that Black people used, to remind each other to remain vigilant about the racism inherent in the system, and now means whatever conservatives don't like (but basically just means treating Black people, trans people, and other marginalized groups as human beings, which they can't say out loud, and why they can't actually define "woke," because that would give the game away).
https://twitter.com/HeadlinerClip/status/1635824967114981376?s=20
My feeble recollection is conservatives had perverted the term politically correct well before Maher’s show.
As for the definition of woke, it started just as being informed, knowing how things work. In conservatives’ perversion of the term, you may well be correct. Indeed, I’m sure for some of the fine people your definition is the operative one. But I also think there’s a huge cohort who genuinely don’t have clue because the people warning them about being woke don’t define it. So when comes to avoiding being woke, they’re not woke to what they’re opposed to.
Yeah, I think Woke has long had positive connotations within the black community, but politically correct has never been anything but an insult (unless maybe among Maoists?)
Maybe politically correct was always a conservative insult but I’m not so sure…
Woke hit the big time during the start of BLM and then spread then got perverted by the wing nuts.
Circa 1988-9, I remember "politically correct" being used ironically by academics, other "woke" types. Then the right-wing bastards took it over at face value.
The culture war legislation being passed in red states is one of the most remarkable cases of “self-ghettoization” I’ve ever seen. Step One: create a retrograde societal hellhole. Step Two: ponder why those stuck up elites (anyone non-white, non-straight, or who doesn’t want to live in a 1950s diorama) won’t come to your state to live and work. Complain your state is being cancelled.
It’s like deliberately shooting yourself in the foot, then flinging the gun away from you and trying to assert it was really someone else who pulled the trigger.
Nah. The local overlords got their setup just like they want it, and no interference is contemplated or allowed. Small minds, small thoughts, small futures – good enough for them.
Disagree. They want the revenue generation and spending power we’d bring with us, with the proviso we adapt to their way of life and live by their rules and standards. When we decline, they get pissed off, call us woke elites, and complain they are being cancelled.
Well, they are kinda self-canceling...
But irregardospectivolously, they already get our over-generous wealth redistribution via the tax code, so Don't Cry fer Them, SundayStyle-a.
No worries, I will shed not one liberal tear to slake their thirst ;)
What I remember from my deep sociological research of watching In the Heat of the Night is that the richest man in town doesn't much cotton to becomin' the second-richest man in town, so keep that fac'try up in the Nawth, bless your heart.
Deep Sociology sounds hyper-woke!
Oh, it was, I saw a black man slap a white man, and a rich white man at that, and he was not immediately lynched, I only hope we can keep this away from The Children.
Which reminds me: To Sir With Love was banned in South Africa during apartheid. Now it has their equivalent of a G rating. It's gone from a movie no one was allowed to see to a movie anyone is allowed to see.
Remember, also, they initially didn't want an expert to help them solve the crime solely because he was *Black.*
And Lee Grant, as Mrs. Colbert (the dead man's wife): "What kind of people are you? What kind of place is this? My husband is dead! Somebody in this town killed him! I want you to find out who! Or I will pack up my husband's engineers, and leave you. . .to yourselves."
Bingo. The redneck gentry that run their towns and collectively run the state use their influence to keep out anything that would tighten the labor market and cause wages to rise. They will either hand off their business to one of their children or sell off the company and retire to Florida.
And it's not just getting people to come to your state. It's holding on to the ones who were raised there. Anyone with a little gumption can recognize they can do better.
Absolutely.
Yes. Always amusing to listen to the grumps so aggrieved by contemplating how much money is piled up in the cities, without also considering that almost all of this country was once much more rural than it is now, and the urban agglomeration was due to rural folks following the money, which the remaining rurals seem clueless about.
Even the hellhole that is the military can get youngs outta there, tho many return, for whatever (probly lotsa) reasons...
Yeah, funny how Capitalism seems to prefer its customers all clumped together in close proximity instead of all spread out to hell and gone. Must be due to an infection by the Woke Mind Virus.
If conservatives ever succeed in killing off the Post Office, they’ll find out really fast how willing FedEx and UPS are to deliver a single package to North Ratsass. They’ll stick to the metro areas, and everybody in rural areas will go without their mail and their meds.
And it's going to cost way more than 60 cents.
That’s one reason Minneapolis is a liberal/progressive bastion, despite having lots of whitebread suburbs and miles upon miles of farms beyond that: half the progressive kids from neighboring states like South Dakota move there after college.
but not you or I. We stayed to fight the good fight?
Yay us?
Side question: I’ve seen people argue that it’s more energy efficient to live in a hot climate and use AC than in a cold climate and heat a house. Is that true? Is the same amount of energy needed to heat a house as to cool it? It seems like generating AC would use more energy, but I have no idea.
I would say it depends on the inside temperatures desired and the insulation and type of furnace/AC. It looks like a big factor is the temperature difference. If you keep your house at 70 F, an average summer temp of 85 is 15 degrees from your house temp. An average winter temp below 55 F would cost more to heat, assuming the efficiencies are the same.
https://www.sparkenergy.com/why-heating-cost-more-than-cooling/
That makes sense. I was just curious if the method of heating/cooling used more energy and wasn’t 1:1, all other things being equal. I saw a person arguing that AC in Phoenix was more economical than winter heating in Duluth, which seemed to be questionable—esp. if the AC is set to 68°, and as long as you don’t heat your house to 76°. But I had no formula to use.
This creates an interesting imbalance in their plans: either the state falls off the map as corporations refuse to expand there despite cheap land & pliable tax accomodations, OR those corporations start wielding their influence to steer these culture-war abominations back to the center.
The reason that the RW snarls so much about corporate "wokery" is that they know where the real power lies, and who makes them jump when they say jump. [I mean we all know how shallow most corporations' commit to DEI really is, but even they couldn't get employees to move to one of these Little Hungaries...]
Precisely. Corporations could not give one rat's fuck about DEI for the sake of justice or fairness. They want to attract educated, intelligent people. They know they can't do that effectively if they've got a Cletus in their C-Suite talking about "it's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" or waxing on about Black on Black crime. And they insist their lower-level staff attend DEI trainings for the sole purpose of insulating themselves from liability.
Well, Jesus - these are the assholes who've spent decades idolizing corporations and CEOs as the pinnacle of Western civilization and granting them ever more power, so if the monster now has its clammy hands around their necks, I'm strangely unmoved.
Strangely Unmoved reminds me of the few remaining houses on stilts at the beach by Cape Hatteras.
Also a good band name.
Strangely Unmoved's debut album is "The Beach by Cape Hatteras". Klezmer-punk.
I spent some time in Oklahoma, mostly OK City, a couple years ago and was shocked at what a nice place it was. Really enjoyed kicking around the small towns and countryside as well. The voting majority are no doubt morons, but most people seemed okay. I read the other day that there are over 400 cannabis dispensaries in Oklahoma City. I can easily believe that since there were plenty of small neighborhoods that had more than the entire state of Illinois. Lots of nice murals as well, which seems to be a thing statewide.
I have heard lots of good things about OK City from people I trust, including a couple who live there, but the 400 dope houses suggests it takes a lotta tokin' to not feel broken, so I will hold off my full endorsement.
I bet Cyrus jumped at Gregg Lance's offer on their way out. 'The Gladys', not so sure if she got one...
Just a guess, but I imagine people in rural OK hate Oklahoma City for the "City" part despite the "Oklahoma" part. First, it's the state capitol, so it's home to the hated gummint, plus any LGBTQ folk who don't immediately get the fuck out of OK probably migrate there, also Black people. Somewhere outside Enid, a father is counseling his son, "Whatever you do, don't go into The City, you won't make it out alive."
Hell, my semi-rural dwelling sister is terrified of THE CITY, and probably wonders how I've spent years on the edge of the abyss. Meanwhile Rochester is, what, 300,000 people, and downtown rolls up the streets at 6pm.
Cannabis dispensaries, you say! Sounds like God's country.
Cannabis is how we know God loves us and that She wants us to be happy.
It's all about the hemp.
But hey, Michael, did you see this? https://cardinalnews.org/2023/03/14/oklahoma-votes-down-legal-weed-heres-what-virginia-can-learn-from-that/
Toooooke-lahoma !
Every night my HoneyLamb and I
Sit around and smoke
It ain't joke
When your throat gets really really dry!
OK, OK...don't overdo it.*
*That's MY job!
Yea, but it’s so easy for residents to get a medical card that they probably voted against rec. Too bad you can’t upload photos to comments, I have one with a guy waving a placard at passing cars offering weed for $100 an ounce.
Oops, meant to say voted against rec to keep those Texas assholes from coming up to buy weed. Makes sense to me.
Never ceases to amaze: Voters approve of something "woke," then continue to vote in legilators and governors that are "anti-woke." What's the matter with Oklahoma?
But... but... we keep voting for the Republicans they send us! What can we do except hope they send us some different Republicans?
And then you get the Democrats (if any) who run against them, and tend to be Republican-lite...so you get into the Harry S Truman conundrum: “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.”
The people of our state voted for medical and recreational cannabis a few years back, but the state government who Knows Better has been foot-dragging and killing those initiatives, respectively. But don’t worry; we’ll vote the same moralistic morons back to the legislature, or maybe find worse ones.
It'll get there. The graft hasn't made it's way to the right hands yet.
Once it get there, everybody needs to make sure Memaw's got her weed card. She gets in the habit of smoking an after dinner spliff before you know it she'll be watching Golden Girls on Me TV instead of Tucker because she's found Tucker harshes her Buzz.
Any of the allotment she doesn't smoke she can sell to her grandkids just like she used to do with the oxy. She'll go to the casino more often and the cat will get fat on Fancy Feast. Everybody wins!
Good point, I can see how if your business model depends on gettin' people really, really angry and then holding them at a rolling boil, legal weed could be seen as a threat.
Calms my rowdy ass down!
Fret not, Worriedman is here!
One of many reasons that I hope the current moment is unsustainable; how long can the roiling boil last before it boils over (again)?
I believe the at least one of those fell afoul of the State Constitution, IIRC. I am sure they will foot drag the Medicaid expansion, too
Should mention that Reservation Dogs is a very good, sometimes great show that’s set in Oklahoma. And it is a state with a horrible racist past which probably isn’t buried too deep. Pawhuska, for example, has a bridge to Colored Town, but there’s nothing on the Colored Town side.
Now I've got Nancy Sinatra in my head..."K-K-K, K-K-K, K-K-K-K-K-K Colored town..."
I spent a summer in Ponca City working at Conoco on a student job. It was... well, I'll just leave it at that.
Did you go to the Chilocco Indian School?
I had a college friend from Ponca City!
Ponca reminds me of the Ponca Hills in Omaha, where I spent many happy days cycling (the roads are brilliant). The place is a delightful refuge from the city, and has its own wacky eccentricities:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercessors_of_the_Lamb
being one...
Ah, the oil bidness, where previously upstanding geologists go to die.
Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain?
Poor Oklahoma, it's just a durn shame there ain't some business that could make money off the wind. But that's just some bird-killin' librul fantasy, never mind.
Where we sit and talk while we watch a hawk makin' lazy circles, stuck in the blades of a wind turbine.
Never mind the hawks – getcher self a job countin' all the dead bats! Slaughterhouse Infinity
Humanity's revenge for the Coronavirus.
Back during the dust bowl, that was probably a popular joke out on the panhandle: "Man, if we could just sell all this wind, we'd be rich!" Now, sadly, the hated liberals have befouled the whole idea with their enthusiastic approval. This is why we (I mean they) can't have nice things.
About 40% of OK power use was supplied by wind power, about 10.5 GW in 2021. OK was third in amount of power generated by wind in a state
You'd think at least one of the Big Energy companies would try to get in on renewable energy instead of trying to stop it.
Fun fact: that movie was filmed in the San Rafael Valley in southern Arizona.
Aaaa-Rizona where the Californians come sweepin' up all the real estate.
If they vote blue, I'm okay with that.
Nah. Speakin' as a born/raised Californio, we don't give a rat's patoot about the land – we care only and exclusively about the water. Not that we take any from Arid Zona – we just hoard any that might be shared. Now, don't get me wrong, we do make some concessions for the good of the planet...just enough so that we can ignore any advice from any do-gooders. So the cactus ornamentals are a signifier of hipper-than-thou.
Now get off my freakishly luxurient lawn!
I’ve known several individuals from Oklahoma who are really good people. And like Idaho (!) it used to have a progressive streak a hundred years ago. Of course the median voter has changed a bit since then. When people are no longer dying in mine accidents or the Dust Bowl, they’re free to luxuriate in conservative tribalism.
You failed to put " " around "accidents".
The people might be great, but the governor and the legislature are insane in the membrane.
https://journalrecord.com/2023/03/07/oklahoma-house-censures-lawmaker-for-actions-during-transgender-bill-protest/
https://kfor.com/news/local/republican-lawmaker-calls-out-state-supt-during-education-committee-meeting/
https://nondoc.com/2023/02/14/veterans-staff-exhausted-by-odva-drama/
Paramount+ has a series called Tulsa King, which features a pot dispensary as one of the money-makers Sylvester Stallone is adding to his organized crime kingdom. Good series. I was astonished when the first episode informed me that OKLAHOMA let pot be dispensed. I’m not keeping up.
I just want someone to rerun the 80s comedy miniseries “Fresno” starring Carol Burnett.
The pot thing is ill-understood in its import. The cons see it as part of the states' rights movement – an example they will wave at the feds when states are ready to enforce mandatory bible study, criminalize speech and re-introduce separate-but-"equal" everything.
Wokelahoma! Where the citizens stick to their principles no matter what! Consider that, after tornadoes wiped out schools and killed schoolchildren two years in a row, Oklahomans made a statement by voting down bills that would have provided storm shelters in the schools. Sure, they're out children and all, but we're not paying even one thin dime more in taxes if that's what it takes to save them from being crushed under their schools!
I'm sure businesses around the country look at this sort of thing and think "Yea! My top execs would love to send their kids to such schools!"
2 solid marks for Wokelahoma!
Stolen from an LGM comment yesterday!
Now they're Brokelahoma because they won't go Wokelahoma.
So occasionally that site *does* produce comments worth reading!
Hey now. Some of us comment there too
You receive special dispensation as the exception that proves the rule
The Fascists desire to suppress sex, whether heterosexual with abortion bans or gay with demonization of LGBTQ people, will mean major companies have to drag employees kicking and screaming into Red states, should they decide tax breaks matter more than retaining qualified workers. Clueless Fascists in Wisconsin can’t imagine why the state is losing out to Minnesota, Michigan and Illinois. I mean, wasn’t Right to Work going to save WI’s manufacturing? Hint: the fact you can toke up anywhere in the Midwest except WI isn’t the reason, it’s just a symptom of the troglodyte attitude of the state legislature. Meanwhile, if I lived in OK, I’d be baked 24/7 too.
They have drag employees????
And boy have they got a story to tell!
But it's No New Tale to Tell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRrn67ovuRQ
I eagerly await RuPaul’s Drag Retail show.
Well, Our Dumb Senator think it's just fine that jobs move out of state, says we have too many jobs already and being able to leave one job and pick up another makes the workers uppity.
As long as the Scissor-Tailed Flycatcher is the state bird, Oklahoma will be at least somewhat OK with me.
https://www.google.com/search?q=scissor-tailed+flycatcher&client=firefox-b-1-d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjegZW29d39AhUik4kEHQDzDcwQ_AUoAXoECAIQAw&biw=1302&bih=675&dpr=2
And I'll never forget seeing an entire flock of Painted Buntings on a hill while the artillery at Fort Sill boomed in the background.
https://www.google.com/search?q=painted+bunting&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiF5o659d39AhVg8ckDHZetBFQQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=painted+bunting&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQAzIICAAQgAQQsQMyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIAEMgUIABCABDIFCAAQgAQ6BAgAEEM6CAgAELEDEIMBOgcIABCxAxBDUOEJWM0XYLEaaABwAHgAgAHSAogByAuSAQYxNS4zLTGYAQCgAQGqAQtnd3Mtd2l6LWltZ8ABAQ&sclient=img&ei=j7cRZMXiB-Dip84Pl9uSoAU&bih=675&biw=1302&client=firefox-b-1-d
Are female Flycatchers called Scissor Sisters?
The Painted Buntings are gorgeous.
Hey Ed, keep it clean. ; )
The male flycatchers are all called Edward
Great Piece! Now I'm wondering where you go to research Oklahoma menswear.
I worked for a giant wholesale nursery in Tahlequah, a town southeast. of Tulsa. Walmart Headquarters was an hour away their traditional big customer. The whole town had a greater Bentonville vibe.
The first time I visited the place I went with my boss. We flew into Tulsa, rented a car and headed south to the farm.
Just east of bum fuck we zigged when we should have zagged and took some kind of Wrong Turn. We were on some small two lane road off the state route. We went over a small hill, the road turned into dirt and then deadended into a ford across some creek.
Across the creek stood a Native American holding a chicken under each arm. I assume he was a Native American He had pigtails, a dark complexion and wore a Billy Jack hat. He was dressed in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt. He smiled and nodded. I got the feeling he would have waved if he hadn't had chickens in his arms. My boss did a 3-point turn and we headed off back up over the hill to the present day. We never spoke of the incident.
Turns out my boss was right in the middle of one of those Dynasty style multi-generational feuds over control of a huge family business. The owner's two sons and their wives we're fighting for control of the company. The patriarch was in his late seventies so who was going to get what was a big issue. I never heard such stories. We were new faces so everywhere we went everybody pumped us for information and gave us their version of things. Treachery, greed, adultery and drug abuse. It was actually pretty cool to be around for that week. They all fought for a couple years and eventually had to bring in an Equity Group who ended up suing the shit out of everybody because the family stole so much. The nursery got sold and turned into an upscale Housing Development.
That's all I know about Oklahoma. I do know the words to that stupid song. We sang it in choir in junior high. I led a drunken rendition of it one night in the bar at the Tahlequah Holiday Inn .
Considering my enheartening a power of ten thing. Please also send me that screenplay as soon as you flesh it out a little, if you know what I mean.
Needs moar sodomy.
Hard to play the banjo when you're holding a chicken under each arm.
2 clucks!
and some Gomorrah-y
The Oklahoma Sooners’ fight song is four bars of music (sic) repeated ad nauseam, and I have always loathed them for inflicting it on the world.
The whole notion of proudly nicknaming your state in honor of people who cheated mystifies me.
Maybe it's related to the long-standing American tradition of naming your state after the people you stole the land from?
Or, to bring it more local, naming your real estate development after the trees that were there until you cut them all down to build the subdivision...?
My 4th grade teacher of NJ history didn’t know what happened to the Lenape so we assumed they just “died out.” It was only a dozen years ago that I learned there is a Lenape nation in OK.
(And your in-state rivals are "Cowboys")
No tornados? Oh, well No self-respecting Texan goes there anyway.
Fun fact: the REAL Tornado Alley is Florida.
I thought for sure the KFOR article was a parody, too.
But not one of Roy's, no wardrobe notes.
And this from the bottom of that article (left off Roy's post): "Pro Temp Treat says he will announce appointees, meeting dates, times and places at the later date."
Pro Temp Treat is delicioso!
Yes, "Pro Temp Treat" sounded a lot like something Roy would come up with on the fly.
I look at "Oklahoma business" and I am reminded of the time the state of Oklahoma declared a Black girl to be White so the state could then control her money: https://twitter.com/AfricanArchives/status/1616822250677882880
'Next, the Queer Old Fashion-Plate!'
—[OFFSTAGE] 'Youʼre fired!'
Fine for the Right: when businesses go to a state with regressive government, it proves how bidness-friendly they be, when they don't, it proves how oppressed they be for their loyalty to RealAmerica™.
(See: 'G-D is in control!' xor 'Satan is the god of this world.'.)
Our enemies are both pathetically weak and immeasurably powerful, take your pick, depending on circumstances.
Well, to be fair, I am not alone in both thinking that I'm lower than whale-shite and higher than G-d's hat. (Hint: if you're self-aggrandising enough to feel that you're capable of great things but haven't done any such, [EDIT] and just self-honest enough to know it,[/EDIT]it's easy to feel pretty low.)
As for enemies, another trope: someone was once clever enough to publish a litany including things like 'We are stoïc, they don’t feel pain the way we do/We are thrifty, they are miserly/….'.
We are unimpressed.
Bravo, you should be writing movies and TV. I wish there were new American movies like this addressing labor/management, in the tradition of John Sayles, Ken Loach, Hal Ashby, Martin Ritt, ... If there are contemporary American equivalents I'd appreciate enlightenment.