#42- WordPress Blog of the Day, 12/13/06!!! 42nd fastest growing on the network

Stop making excuses for a person and their behavior.

To have a charitable heart is a virtue, but is virtue that great when it hurts? It’s not; I think that we can all agree on that. I promise you, it will start hurting a lot when a man or woman treats you like dirt, acts against your best interests, or has no consideration.

Our acceptance of bad behavior stems from several things. Low self-esteem, attachment to a certain outcome, guilt, or a fear of emotional honesty can make us turn a blind eye to maltreatment. Also, many people are socialized to be giving and selfless; we shouldn’t make too much of a scene, he didn’t mean to say that assy comment at dinner…the list goes on, and on, and on. Women fall prey to the memes of the “good woman” or “the good girlfriend”- this is why that horrible book, “The Rules”, made the bestseller lists. Men, on the other hand, are taught to be the long-suffering hero, meant to slay every one of his lady love’s dragons. Heroics can only go so far, because self-respect dictates that there be limits.

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Yippeeeee! This carnival picks the best film reviews out of entries submitted…and my “Jesus Camp” review made the cut!

Go and take a look… 

While playing around with the word “Gold-digger” on Technorati last night, I stumbled upon the following blog entry. A fresh search today yielded about 5 additional blogs with the same list, and I didn’t have the heart to count the rest. All of the blogs hosting the list are owned by young Black men and women. At first, I didn’t take it seriously, and hoped that it was just someone’s bad idea for a joke. However, the replies I saw disproved my theory, as you’ll see in a future entry.

People actually chose and rated themselves based on this list. For real. Seriously. In earnest.

There seemed to be a universal agreement that this is the way things are, and that it was okay for women to be categorized by severe, hateful values that separate females into virgins and whores. To be exact, 25% virgins, 75% whores.

I’m just going to go down the list and comment on the different points. Get comfortable…it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

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Documentary directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady filmed “Jesus Camp” during one of the most tense political climates in recent history: the retirement of liberal Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’ Connor, and the nomination and subsequent confirmation of ultra-conservative New Jersey native Samuel Alito, Jr. to the bench as her replacement. Against all common sense, Dubya nominated an anti-abortion, big business-favoring male to replace a strong female role model. Why? Yeah, okay, the man has the intellect of a bag of hair (and not good hair. We’re talking old weave that fell out of a whore’s ‘do after a hard weekend). He was catering to his base - the newly empowered evangelical religious Right.

The film, set in flyover country (rural Missouri), is an eye-opening peek into the world of charismatic evangelicals. More importantly, however, it scars your mind with visions of writhing, bucking children lying on the floor; young, teary-eyed girls, speaking in tongues; a young boy saying that they felt there was “something missing in his life” at the tender age of five. This is a documentary showing the ritualized scarification of innocent minds that may never have a chance to see differently.

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