Fat White Men

I stated this little project on livejournal a few years ago because my daughter decided I needed a blog. I eventually moved over here to my own domain, but I still use the livejournal account to participate in a few communities, which is where I ran across the following article this morning. It's a good read and it makes me glad I've kept up with the blogging. The article was crossposted to DailyKos, so I'll link to it there: To The Fat White Men In Power: Vaffanculo:

Several diaries lately have featured pictures of "the powers that be." Rich, fat, pink, white men that make the laws. Fat white men that think they own my uterus. My favorite of these was Antonin Scalia doing his Vaffanculo gesture. What do these fat men know about my life? What do they care about my life? Hell, my parents don't even get me - and my parents are going to be at least sympathetic if something happened to me like I fell on financial hard times or got pregnant accidentally while on this med I'm taking that would harm the baby.

These fat white men don't care. They passed the bankruptcy bill. They are angling to overturn Roe. All for their own profit. For their own gain. To consolidate power in their own hands and their own party. In their elitist class. Their corporatocracy.

Antonin Scalia, vaffanculo! Vaffanculo vai! Testa di cazzo! Perzo di merda! Two can play at that game. My mouth is dirtier than Maryscott's (in Italian) when I am angry.

It's not just the fat white men in the government. It's the five or so fat white men that own the media and control the message to Americans. It's Rupert Murdoch buying Myspace. It's Colgate buying Tom's of Maine. It's the fat white  men named Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling. It's big business. It's the revolving door of fat white men moving from business to lobbying to government.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... same rant, different day, right? Well, in a way, maybe. It's a great rant, though, and very much worth going over to read the whole thing. And then think about this:

Last week, one Kossack busted Kaloogian for a fake picture and another Kossack found the proof. Within hours, it was off Kaloogian's website. Within a day it was on the NYT, WaPo, and the local San Diego media - not to mention Al Franken.

The same week, Jimmy Carter came to talk to us.

We are powerful. Think about it guys. When we talk, they pay attention. We can shape the message. We can make a difference. Let's use the power. I don't want to be the crazy one in society anymore. I want the insanity that's taken over our country to stop.

That last part is important. As a collective, we bloggers are making change, and everyone -- from the big name, high traffic sites all the way down to the smaller sites that work not for love or money, but purely because we want change -- is participating in that. There are a lot of us utility players out here -- guys in the middle of the bucket brigade -- who may not break the news (though sometimes we do pass it up to the bigger blogs), but we do keep the story moving, and lately we're getting some traction. I'm not sure how many readers I have (I get conflicting reports), but I know that among them are a few spiders and robots who report back to the search engines, and links do count. And the story keeps moving.