"stupid boy"

i have just discovered that one of my distinct hates is to hear someone intelligent say something so ignorant that it seems absolutely inconceivable that anyone would actually say something like that even as a joke. see my roommate just, once again, reiterated a joke her brother told and that she then passed along to me about a month ago about Barack Obama. she said, and i quote, "I wouldn't vote for him because he'd just blow up air force one." the first time she made this very unfunny and ridiculous joke, i looked at her, completely agape and said something to the effect of "you can't be serious." and she said, "well, he's a Muslim, isn't he?" i was just so shocked to hear my otherwise quite intelligent roommate and friend say something so wholly offensive and ridiculous. we argued (lightly), with me saying things like, "that's like saying that all white people are in the klu klux klan," to which she responded, "i know that there are good white people and bad white people. but he's a Muslim, and i won't vote for him." really, of all the things to focus on in a man's life, especially someone running for president. let's not look at his politics or his campaign promises or anything even remotely close. let's instead look at his (implied but not accurate) religious affiliation and deem him a terrorist for it. tonight, she again made that same joke and i again got mad, though this time i was slightly more vociferous in my argument. i said things like, "that is ignorant and not at all funny," while she kept protesting, "it's just joke, i was just joking," etc. finally i said, "yeah, but it's not funny, it's ignorant, and you're just perpetuating cruel stereotypes and racism. what you said is tantamount to my dad saying that he'd rather see his daughters date a lazy, good-for-nothing white guy with no job than a hard-working, successful black man" (which my father actually did one time to me on the phone. and then i told him that that was the stupidest thing i think he'd ever said. he didn't appreciate that much). and then i went into the kitchen, finished fixing my dinner, and went into my room without another word to either her or her fiance. once in my room, i had another thought, thanks to my recent reading of Philip Roth's The Plot Against America: that, in her perpetuating of stereotypes and false misconceptions, she is doing much the same thing that made it all right for the Americans in Roth's alternative WWII United States to persecute the American Jews and, conversely, that made it seem right for so many Germans to persecute and to allow the persecution and subsequent murder of European Jews, not to mention all the persecution before and after these rather well-known moments in history. it's the same kind of thinking that made it all right to inter Japanese Americans in the United States during WWII. and it is the same kind of thinking that, even now in our "enlightened times" earns peaceful, law-abiding Arab-Americans persecution and harmful stereotyping. so to all those out there who ignorantly think that all Arabs or Muslims are terrorists and can't seem to tell "a good one from a bad one" as one ignorant graduate school classmate of mine put it, i say pull your head out of your ass and think before you say things that make the people around you want to throw something at your head. and that's my rant for the night. a little more serious than my previous rants, but i got ticked off tonight and needed to let it out. so there it is. in all it's angry glory. goodnight! from Keith Urban's "Stupid Boy" a very beautiful and poignant song "So what made you think you could take a life And just push it, push it around I guess to build yourself up so high You had to take her and break her down" disclaimer: I am in no way saying that I think Barack Obama is perfect or even the ideal president. What I am saying is that, instead of making stupid and uniformed assumptions because of a person's religious faith or even their family's religious faith, that perhaps you should look at how they live their life rather than what god they worship. and, when voting for anyone for public office, please focus on what's important and make informed decisions rather than simply voting for a candidate because they're one party affiliation or the other or because they practice one faith or way of life. look at their politics and what they want to do for their country, state, county, city, etc rather than focusing on whether they Christian, Jewish, Muslim, man, woman, black, white, purple...or whether or not they're better looking than their opponent (true story, i heard about a girl in a poli-sci class at ACU who said she was going to vote Kerry over Bush because she thought he was better looking. ridiculous, n'est pas?)