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.]
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.
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.
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.
Mar 15, 2023·edited Mar 15, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
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 .
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.'.)
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.]
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.
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.
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.
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
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 .
No tornados? Oh, well No self-respecting Texan goes there anyway.
I thought for sure the KFOR article was a parody, too.
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.'.)
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.