The headline of a recent USA Today article read: FEDS TRY TO DETECT 'LONE OFFENDERS.' Lone offenders being: "lone attackers who may be contemplating politically charged assaults."
That, of course, could be anyone.
But the triptych that went with the article was of Ted Kaczynski, Eric Rudolph and James Von Brunn. The not so subtle message: beware the evil white man. Clearly the mainstream media, which I know is evil because I read it in a blog, is at war with white males. Or as some -- not me -- would refer to them: "whitey."
Every time a white male governor secretly leaves the country for five days to be with his "soul mate," or some patriot shows up at a town hall meeting on health care reform packing a loaded gun the mainstream media flogs the pony. Simultaneously, they indict the dozens and dozens of white men who go to work when they're supposed to, try not to call the president a racist-Nazi-socialist-fascist-death paneler, and who can engage in the First Amendment without doing an open carry of the Second Amendment.
It's painful watching the ongoing, vicious denigration of "whitey"... and can I just tell you how much I hate that word? One of my best friends is a white guy. He's good people. A credit to his race. I had lunch with him once, and not only did he pick up the check, he tipped very well.
And once you get to know a white guy, you come to understand that the way some of them act; it's a cultural thing. White guys are and have always been a minority in America. Going back to the first population count in 1790 white men made up only 41 percent of the population. Now, they're less than 32 percent. And, as a minority, they've had a long history of oppression over the last six months. They're down to six of nine spots on the Supreme Court, 82 out of 100 Senators and a scant 79 percent of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 Companies.
How would you like to literally wake up one morning and face those kinds of losses to your hegemony? It makes for a sense of peril which does not fade just by watching a couple of episodes of Mad Men and getting nostalgic for the good old days.
And then all people ever want to do is blame white guys for everything. "You started the war in Iraq." "You ruined the economy." "You fired Paula Abdul from American Idol." Bitch, bitch, bitch.
Heck, if that were me getting continually hit up like that, I'd probably start demanding to see people's birth certificates and arresting them in their homes for no good reason, too.
Under the circumstances, we can't get any more mad at "whitey" -- and, seriously, I mean it: I never want to hear that word again -- for being the way he is than we can a bird for flying.
President Obama, when he was still Senator Obama, called it: "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Instead of blaming white men for all that's wrong with America, let's try walking a mile in their frustrated, little shoes.