Neither Side Now

I’ve looked at life from left and right, as each side claims to own the light.   But it’s life’s delusions they both sell, as anyone with brains can tell. – apologies to Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now.

It is hard being a moderate in this polarized country.   A trip through the morning news ranges from annoying to infuriating as I encounter one article after another espousing a point of view that I see as too extreme.   So, after a long election year in which the positions of the right made me align with the left in spite of my reservation’s about the so-called progressives, I have tried to step back from the news and worry less.  Of course, I knew that the left would eventually campaign for something that seemed just as outrageous as The Big Lie.  This week, while we were visiting with my daughter, she mentioned that California is reducing access to higher math in public schools because teaching it is racist.   Now, my daughter travels a more rightward path to the news than I do, so I was skeptical, but as a 50 year Californian, I wouldn’t put anything past the California Democrats, so I did some research.  Yikes.

Closet Bigots

If you’ve been coming by Older Eyes – Bud’s Blog for a while you know that not only do I enjoy sports, I enjoy participating in some of the discussions of social issues that American sports’ larger than life persona stimulates.   Certainly, the statements of Donald Sterling to his so-called assistant have ignited a firestorm of discussion about racism … and bigotry in general … in our society.  Yesterday, owner of the NBA Dallas Mavericks, Mark Cuban, commented on the situation in an interview with Inc Magazine.  Here’s what he said, in part: I mean, we’re all prejudiced in one way or another. If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it’s late at night, I’m walking to the other side of the street. And if on that side of the street, there’s a guy that has tattoos all over his face — white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere — I’m walking back to the other side of the street. And the list goes on of stereotypes that we all live up to and are fearful of. So in my businesses, I try not to be hypocritical. I know that I’m not perfect. I know that I live in a glass house, and it’s not appropriate for me to throw stones.

A Little Prejudiced

Wednesday night, while I was sitting in my recliner, waiting for a post topic to turn up, I turned my Roku to Amazon Prime and started watching the 2004 film, Crash.  Crash takes place over a thirty-six hour period on Los Angeles, following a racially diverse cast of characters as their lives intertwine and their individual prejudices appear in random encounters.   Rather than divide the cast into heroes and villains, each person is shown to harbor racial prejudices, usually borne of ignorance rather than malice.  A signature of the film is that many of the characters find themselves in situations where their humanity extends beyond their prejudice.  For example, bigoted police officer, John Ryan, molests a black woman during a traffic stop, then ends up risking his own life to save her from a burning automobile.  A theme of the film is that everyone harbors prejudices.   The film was a surprise winner of the Oscar for Best Picture over the 2004 favorite, Brokeback Mountain.  Many critics attributed that to homophobia among Academy members and others complained that interconnection of the many characters in Crash was contrived (Can you imagine that?  A contrived plot?).   I didn’t see Brokeback Mountain but I really enjoyed Crash, and I enjoyed it again Wednesday night.  It touches not only upon the bad that can infect each of us but the good we can do.  It’s well acted and the ethereal score by New Age artist, Mark Isham, carries the film’s mood perfectly.