And You Turn Yourself Around

                As an observer of human nature, I love it when some angry guy prefaces his sentence with something like, “I’ve got nothing against black people…BUT…”  Seriously, there’s nothing in the modern vernacular that says, “This guy’s about to say something really racist” as some guy trying to make a 21st century, pretend-it’s-a-specific-statement-but-really-it’s-a-generalized-statement, attempting to modulate what he’s about to say.  And it happens ALL THE TIME.  It’s funny.  It’s honest.  It goes directly against the PC Code which we’re all supposed to live under.  I call this move, “The Not Ready For Prime Time 180 Degree Hokey Pokey.”

                Unlike the announcers at roller rinks, I don’t use the term “Hokey Pokey” lightly.  The bumper sticker that questions whether the Hokey Pokey really IS what it’s all about is one of the funniest things I’ve read on a car’s bumper since Smith & Wesson closed their insurance agency.  This “I’m not against all…” verbal dance is a hokey pokey.  It involves sticking your right foot in, then immediately pulling your right foot out, before sticking it back in and shaking it all about.  The guy who’s about to say something that would get a modern politician in trouble (but was once considered a standard part of a political stump speech) needs to stick his right foot in, in order to see if the hearer is going to be receptive.  Then, after shaking his right foot all about, he’s going to want to turn himself around to see if you, the hearer, are in agreement that what he just said is, indeed, what it’s all about.  See, that analogy made some sense.   

                I use racial animosity as an example because it’s a common one, but it’s by no means the only hokey pokey in the roller rink of 21st century verbal life.  I’ve heard homosexual slurs, anti-various ethnicity/country of origin slurs, anti-political viewpoint slurs, and even one anti-cat owner slur (that’s not a metaphor for librarians, lesbians, or leprechauns, but an actual guy who really hated felines and badly wanted to tell me about it).  The gay one is really common now that America is smack-dab in the process of accepting gay people as just normal people like everyone else, except with better clothes and cooler dance moves.  It usually starts off a little something like, “I don’t have anything against what gay guys do in their own home, BUT…”  And it ends with a reference to the Old Testament, a statement affirming a belief that techno music is Satanic, or a quotation of something grandiosely evil that Bill O’Reilly said on his ironically-titled “No Spin Zone.”  I think the anti-gay ones are the funniest ones these days. 

                On the grand continuum of social progress the “Pro-Family” folks, who, of course, aren’t actually pro-anything, are just the latest example of what always happens when social norms are in the midst of changing.  They’re a part of the same phenomenon that once gave “scientific” justifications of white people’s superiority, Catholic inferiority, Tammany Hall superiority, rural inferiority, whatever.  Go back and read some of those anti-black people tracts.  They’re hilarious.  In retrospect they stretch the limits of debate prep far beyond what anyone with a fully-formed cerebral cortex would stomach, even then.  Using phrenology (feeling head bumps to determine something vital) to justify having racially separate water fountains seems ludicrous now, and really should have even then, but these tomes were once given actual serious consideration.  The opportunistic preachers and even more opportunistic politicians of the moment who use the hokey pokey move to qualify their hate won’t be with us in a few years, so we need to soak up their hilarious “wisdom” while we still can.  These hokey pokeyers won’t be around forever…and THAT’S what it’s all about.