I went to college deep in the belly of the dirty south, and coming from the ethnically and racially diverse DC area, to say that I experienced a culture shock would be a drastic understatement.
My blood would boil when some fucktard in philosophy would argue creationism or some stupid hag at the bar would regurgitate what her grandmother taught her about Jews going to hell... but you have to pick your battles (in the former case, I waited till after class and bludgeoned him with my #2 pencil; the latter was set up with my intellectually naive friend James (not you James M., the other one).
After a year of debating, pleading, and arguing with every person who uttered a racial slur or intolerant comment, I gave up. A self-righteous Yankee wasn't going to mend too many bridges in the South, and my fragile ego wouldn't allow 50% of the campus to dislike me. Once I lifted my self-imposed burden it was much easier to accept people and make some lifelong friends.
Yet three years later and 600 miles north, I still find myself inundated with the same narrow-minded Jim Crowism that I thought was left behind in Georgia. With every tragedy, election, or political firestorm comes a flood (no pun intended) of email propaganda containing carefully designed assertions ripe for plausible deniability, and emotional declarations that appeal to the lowest common denominator.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, here is one that I have received no fewer than 6 times:
"What I have learned about Katrina"
*The hurricane only hit black family's property
*New Orleans was devastated and no other city was affected by the hurricane.
*Mississippi and Alabama each are reported to have a tree blown down.
*New Orleans has no white people.
*The hurricane blew a limb off a tree in the yard of an Alabama resident.
*When you are hungry after a hurricane steal a big screen TV.
*The hurricane did 23 billion dollars in improvements to New Orleans.
*New Orleans is now free of welfare, looters and gangs - and they are in your city.
*White folks don't make good news stories.
*Don't give thanks to the thousands that came to help rescue you, instead bitch because the government hasn't given you a debit card yet.
*Only black family members got separated in the hurricane rescue efforts.
*Ignore warnings to evacuate and the white folks will come get you and give you money for being stupid.
Somehow, some way, people I consider friends - many of whom proclaim to be “God-Fearing Christians” (BTW, why would you fear God? I thought he was supposed to be our friend) are spreading this crap around.
G.W. Bush, Tom “The Hammer” Delay, and apparently a bunch of white folks in the South would move heaven and earth to save the life of one woman in Florida to combat euthanasia (which it wasn’t anyway), but they’ll sit on their ass and not bat an eye as tens of thousands of poor men, women, children, babies, and elderly wither away in the New Orleans heat. These were vibrant, living AMERICANS without the means to escape their abandoned city. Surrounded by water, sewage, gasoline, and dead bodies, they seemingly had no one to turn to. Is this the culture of life that the “compassionate conservatives” claim to subscribe to? Truth be told, the same people that advertise their moral superiority would rather throw valuable time and resources toward one brain dead white women rather than focus energy on an immediate crisis that has enveloped a major US city filled with blacks. The culture of life wants a zero-tolerance for looters policy to sound imposing while children die of dehydration and bodies float in the streets.
They expect you to take care of yourself, and if you can't, then fuck you… you brought it on yourself. They want you to support your nation while some time this month the 17,000th American will be wounded, disfigured, mutilated and either returned to duty for another crack at making Iraqis happy or returned home to a lifetime subscription to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Monthly. We are bombarded with endless quasi-news about the disappearance of one white teenager in Aruba and her camera-whore of a mother, but when circumstances call for nuanced reporting, all points devolve into a blame game. It makes me want to make like Michael Douglas in “Falling Down” and go nutzo on them.
I know that some of my Republican friends--the reasonable ones—understand that not everyone was dealt the same hand at birth. Not everyone has a home, car, or family and friends they can rely on when the going gets tough. Unfortunately, far too many believe that they earned everything they have gotten in life (yeah, their parents might have given them a nudge, but they deserved it), and that no one, especially the government, should be allowed to take their hard-earned cash to help those in need. But that's their thing. Demonstrating overt elitism and feeling entitled actually works. It keeps the circle unbroken. If you saw Bush and Cheney casually, almost smugly, visiting the destroyed neighborhoods in Mississippi and New Orleans, you know the type of people I am talking about.
There are few musical artists who need the old canonization speech less than Neil Young. With his reputation preserved amongst us youngsters as the Godfather of Grunge (apparently based on little more than a predilection towards flannel), he's already known by all as the hip great-uncle amidst the Woodstock era's senile grandparents. Few have been able to maintain lyrical relevance for such an extended period, and none that I know of have grown in scope and melody to the degree Mr. Young has over his prolific career. 
