[i will wear thirty two shades of eyeliner & gentrify your avant garde poetry]

Sunday, February 04, 2007

the superbowl

i'm watching the superbowl. the superbowl is an amazing event. large padded men battle other padded men and assault each other in a physical manner and with strategy. the strategy is complex. like chess or war.

the commercials this year are subpar. my favorite shows various men slapping each other in the face rather than high-fiving.

but something else. i was emailing w/ a friend and she said something about people and class struggle and i thought this:

people coming out of a middle-class/upper-class background don't want to help poor people by paying taxes for a comprehensive health-care system or by subsidizing education expenses, food etc..., because they think something like, "i earned healthcare, a good job, etc... by myself and so why should i have to help someone else do what takes hard work. poor people should just work hard, then they wouldn't need my help." what middle-class/upper-class people don't understand is that this is a false thought. these people have had help all their life. they had parents who could afford health-care, childcare, healthy food, after school activities, homes, homes in wholesome neighborhoods, the schools that are in wholesome neighborhoods which are also wholesome, if not private schools, money for college, the time to complete college applications and to apply for grants, scholarships etc... if a high school student is working full-time, he or she doesn't have the time to take advantage of these options. then finally the money to not work when at college and to focus on studies, to get internships (unpaying internships that the poor college student can't afford to take). in high school i once asked my teacher for an extension because i had to work etc etc... and my teacher said, "you shouldn't be working, school is your job." i tried to explain that if i didn't work i wouldn't have clothes to wear or food to eat, and i certainly wouldn't be going to school but...

i don't know what i'm talking about.

i don't know how this relates to football.

i went to the dentist maybe five times from age 0 to age 27. never had insurance. my teeth aren't quite white and aren't quite straight. everywhere i look i see people with white, straight teeth and i think about how much money and time it took to get them that way. i see young people with new cars. it is a different lifestyle and mindset. the middle/upper-class person always knows that no matter how much they fail, drop out of college, choose and 'alternative-lifestyle', try living in various cities, try different carreers, that there is always a support system to help them. this is good, but it is wrong to think that all accomplishments are the accomplishments of one person alone.

this was boring.

there will be a monkey battle-royale later.

and kissing elephants.

8 comments:

amber said...

football is the most warlike sporting event except for war. the colts rule. i didn't actually watch the superbowl.

as for the class war, i actually think this is opposite. i think rich people are much more willing to pay higher taxes for those things, but i think when faced with a poor person their reaction is quite different. like, ideally they want to believe they want to help people, but when face to face with those that actually might need the help are angry and unwilling to accept these poor people as their brethren.

Rich people do not give money to bums. Poor people give money to bums.

Rich people vote for higher taxes out of guilt. Lower classes, and especially the middle class, do not b/c they feel as though poor people should work harder.

It's all very strange.

ward gleason said...

i don't think rich people generally vote for higher taxes. historically one main tenant of the republican party has been small government, low taxes, states rights (if the current republicans don't exactly believe in this ideology, they, generally, at least seem to believe in the low taxes thing). there is of course a level of generalization here. liberals seem to vote for more taxes than conservatives, or whatever, and everyone has their own peculiar political and life philosophy, even if it is not defined. i think that if you could survey everyone about taxes, that the percentages would be lower among the wealthy. but i don't really know anything.

MadisonGlass said...

You're begining to resent me. I get it. I hate me too. Great. Everybody hates me. I have no more friends and my birds are dead. I want to die. But I suppose that's because I grew up rich and can afford to think about things like whether I want to die or not. Awesome. I'm out of a job at the end of the week. With all my advantages though, I should have no problem finding another. Fuck.

ward gleason said...

i don't resent you. you will find another job and you will have the time to choose among various jobs. happily ever after.

ward gleason said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
amber said...

It's not like that maddie. Be calm. You are a beautiful sunflower in this wasteland of a population. You're heart is too big. Your heart is just too big.

MadisonGlass said...

And now you are mocking me.

amber said...

i wasn't mocking...