UNCA D may have mentioned once or twice (or more) that the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle neither understands nor respects the majority culture, conservative and traditionalist, of our great state. In plainer English, the Chronicle doesn't much like Texas. We simply don't measure up to the newspaper's lofty standards.
This is such a startling thing to say or even consider that you may be inclined not to believe it. The editorialists may even disbelieve it. And yet the evidence . . .
. . . is all but incontrovertible.
Yet another snotty Texas editorial greeted us in the wee Monday edition.
We don't think about Amarillo all that often. It's a little city, not much bigger than Pasadena. If it were closer to Houston, we'd think of it as a suburb. Instead, it's out there all by itself in the Panhandle. So we hardly think of it at all.
(Editorial, "Out of the fire: New slogan of tolerance: 'Dude! You have no Quran!'" Houston Chronicle, September 20, 2010)
This paragraph luxuriates in its big-city attitude and cutesy-poo show indifference to fellow Texans who happen to live outside the Chronicle circulation zone.
And this studied indifference is a form of aggression, like a clique of mean girls -- the royal "we" -- who wound lesser creatures by ignoring them.
The next paragraph mocks David Grisham, a son of Amarillo who deserves mocking, but look how it's done.
Grisham is the director of something called Repent Amarillo, which aims to deter promiscuity, homosexuality and non-Christian worship practices. That list impressed us. We hadn't realized that Amarillo has so much going on.
The Chronicle now professes a faint admiration for Amarillo because it "has so much going on" -- namely promiscuity, homosexuality and non-Christian worship practices.
That's a double insult. First, it denies the full humanity of the people of Amarillo by suggesting such things might be unknown there, at least so far as "we" at the Chronicle knew (wink, wink; nudge, nudge). Second, it mocks the majority culture of Amarillo, and of much of Texas, by suggesting that any concern about such matters is evidence of what yokels they be.
Reading on: "Who knew that Amarillo had a Unitarian strike force?" "Who knew that Amarillo had flashmobs?" And when about 200 people, "including Buddhists and Muslims," showed up to protest a planned burning of the Koran: "Sorry, Amarillo. We were so wrong about you."
This is all meant ironically and sarcastically. It purports to praise Amarillo, but in fact insults the city at large by enthusiastically overpraising small out-groups of residents that the Chronicle intends for us as to see as critics of the dominant culture.
Here's an analogy from closer to home: The Chronicle speaks lovingly of art cars and midnight downtown skating clubs, but treats the great washed masses who make this city run -- both in business and in civic organizations such as churches and scout troops -- with indifference (on most days) and contempt (on others).
Back to Amarillo.
The counterprotesters seemed surprised to see so many of themselves.
This, of course, echoes the faux surprise of the Chronicle, itself.
They carried signs that said "Love Thine Enemy." And when reporters asked for comment, they said common-sense [read common sense] stuff: "Any time you burn books, that's ignorant." And: "It's mean." They made us proud to be Texans.
Let's join in saluting the counterprotesters, but without losing sight of what the nasty-spirited Chronicle is up to.
This is precisely the sort of narrow pride that Ms. Obama expressed during the campaign. The county is "just downright mean," she said, but "for the first time in my adult life, I'm really proud of my country." Why? Because Mr. Obama was doing so well politically.
The Chronicle's purported pride in being Texan is indistinguishable from Ms. Obama's perverse and miserly pride in America. It's not the Texanhood of ordinary Texans; it's the very special kind of pride that an elitist might feel: pride in being a Texan unlike the ordinary kind.
The editorial tells how a skateboarder -- good on him -- snatched the Koran from Mr. Grisham's barbeque grill, then concludes this way:
And we'd like to announce the formation of Repent Houston -- a group in which we repent of all the dumb things we used to think about Amarillo.
The joke here is that the Chronicle in fact reconfirms all the "dumb things" about the great majority of people in Amarillo and Texas. It does this by relying on fellow elitists to see the deliberate falsehood in the Chronicle's purported forgiveness of the entire city because of the acts of the counterprotesters. All other Amarilloans, of course, probably support Mr. Grisham.
This editorial is the equivalent of a raised middle finger to Amarillo, to Texas, and to everyone who dares criticizes the Houston Chronicle for its lack of understanding and respect for these places and for readers like us.
For atonement, the Chronicle should require each member of the editorial board -- and every executive in the editorial board's chain of command -- to eat a four-pound steak at Amarillo's Big Texan Steak House, then fire each one who fails to consume the entire meal in an hour.
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