Aging White Males Need Love Too (Cigar Smoke 6-18-09)

You know that new Supreme Court nominee, the one with the broken ankle, and the broken compass. Yeah, that one. Well she has raised my ire, my hackles and my blood pressure. Too bad she couldn’t do anything about my ED.

Anyway, her whole whining, tiresome, racist Latina diatribe about her being better than an old white male has frosted this old white male’s frijoles, baby. Of course, she’s not the first one to have this learned opinion. You hear it constantly. It’s the new mantra. All the sensitive, understanding types want to have “people of color” for elected officials and judges, etc., etc. Now, you gotta be black, brown, yellow, or red to be one of the correctly colored guys. Well, white is a color, dammit.

And you know, us old white guys haven’t done all that badly for, say, the last 300 years. We’ve created the greatest country in history for starters. We have the best system of justice since time began. We have had an incredibly strong economic system, a free capitalistic system, which has given the world a wealth it never dreamed of. Our medical system is second to none. Our farmers, mostly white males, have fed more people in history than any other particular color of farmer that I know of.

We have the most powerful military in the history of mankind, a military which has not only kept us free for over 200 damn years, but has also freed millions and millions of oppressed “people of color” around the world. Most of the dead guys buried in foreign fields are our white males who gave up their white male lives so their white male children could be bashed by non-white revisionist short-memoried ingrates.

Hell, I could go on and on about what us disgusting old white guys have accomplished — from the computer industry to the car industry to the life-saving drug industry to almost any other industry you can think of.

Of course, I realize we, as old white guys, didn’t do all this alone. We had the help of wonderful and talented women, and equally deserving people of every race and color. I am thankful and grateful for how we all pulled together to achieve what we’ve achieved. I applaud us all. I applaud all the people of color. Including the white color.

A lot of women and minorities died in our wars, and they were all absolutely essential to helping create this great country. I am not trying to pit one group against the other. On the other hand, I would have to say that the old white guys were the dominant force in what happened for centuries. And most of that was pretty damn good in this old white cowboy’s opinion. Maybe with all the talk about tolerance and understanding and acceptance, Judge Broken Ankle might cut us a little slack. Or is cutting a little slack just for people of the correct color?

And you know, some of these great people of color who are idolized haven’t done all that well in most of the countries they came from. The old brown males from South America and Mexico have, for the most part, established dictatorships and caused misery for millions and millions of their own people. Their economic systems have generally been a disaster — considering all the resources they have. Hey, you don’t see Americans risking their lives to sneak across the southern border too much, do you? I wonder why.

And Africa is almost a total catastrophe. It’s painful to see the level of corruption and despair on that continent. The millions of black people slaughtered — by their own people of color. It’s heart-wrenching. And when us old white males (along with others) send billions of dollars of food and aid over to help them, most of it is wasted or stolen by the people of color in charge.

Hell, using a person’s color to determine your role models just doesn’t seem to cut it. Old black males and old brown males can be just as bad as us old white males. So, I guess in this case, white is as good as the other colors.

And hey, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, Dwight David Eisenhower, Jonas Salk, Elvis Presley, FDR, George Washington, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Albert Schweitzer, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Red Grange, Jerry West, Bill Clinton, Alexander Graham Bell, Johnny Carson, Johnny Cash, Johnny Unitas, Willie Nelson, Audie Murphy, Alan Alda, Al Gore, Ross Perot, Tommy Lasorda, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Mark Twain, Wayne Gretski, Clarence Darrow, Billy Graham, Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Robert E. Lee, Ronald Reagan, Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, John Irving, Carl Sagan, Lenny Bruce, Rodney Dangerfield, Edgar Allen Poe, Merle Haggard, Warren Buffett, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, and Rush Limbaugh all have one thing in common.

They’re all old white males.

Jim Laris is a former publisher and owner of the Weekly. Contact him at jimlaris@mac.com.