White People Meeting, Tonight, 4 PM, Olive Garden

I'm white. Really white. Raised on Lawrence Welk in the Rocky Mountains white. My white-person cred includes my unabashed love for Bruce Springsteen and the fact that if I eat anything spicier than a sharp Cheddar I crumble into dust and blow away. That is how white I am. Which is why I have trekked to the secret cave and lit the sacred candles and after half an hour or so of moving giant mirrors around I have lit the Merle Haggard symbol and if you look up you will see it in the sky. If you are a very young white person maybe you didn't get the handbook yet, and so you will not know that when you see Merle Haggard's ghostly visage above you that means that you must without delay get to your nearest Olive Garden for the White People Meeting.

I have prepared my remarks for publication so that nobody can say they missed the memo. Here is the rough draft, with full remarks to be published afterwards.

***

Good evening and welcome to this, the most sacred of white-people rituals, where we vote on the rules. We have not had a rules convention in quite some time, and I call this one against the backdrop of a dire emergency. There are a few points we need to cover this evening, and I'll start off the conversations. Same rules as always: show of hands and your options when voting will be "yes," "no," "I need more information" and "let's hold a seance to ask Caligula."

There is a seemingly small concern that we need to address before it becomes a thing. It's the rhyming. We're still doing "white" and "right" and "might" and in the meantime have you heard the vocabulary coming out of your average minor hit on Soundcloud? It wasn't hard to be the best at words when we were the only ones allowed to know most of them, and if you refer back to the minutes of that meeting we had when the slaves were freed this was something we talked about - to maintain any sense of our own superiority we were going to have to get more creatively verbose. We have failed to do that.

In fact, we're giving up language to everyone else. We can't even invent new insults anymore; we're relying on the shit our great-great-great-grandpappies made up and I have to say, it's embarrassing. Actually it's why I called the meeting: Bill Maher is one thing, we all know that there's an age at which one's mental acuity begins to break down and they can't be expected to write creative jokes or bon mots anymore and we just sort of collectively wait for them to die because otherwise we'd have to talk to them and as you know, due to the White People For Peace Accord of 1974, we let the Olds drift into obscurity when they lose their edge rather than making a fuss, to avoid internal strife.

But this guy in Flint, I think we need to address officially and as a bloc. If you've not heard about him, he says that the reason Flint doesn't have clean water is that black people don't pay their bills, though he didn't say "black people" and he didn't allow himself to be hobbled by stupid things like "facts" and "what actually happened there." He's resigned for the indiscretion of being caught on tape saying all this stuff but I think we need to discuss seriously the fact that this kind of stupidity is increasing of late.

Seriously, guys, we've talked about this, and we know what we would do if it were us, and the fact that nobody's done it is an entirely incomprehensible miracle. The reason that Flint doesn't have clean water is because the same pricks that missed the '87 meeting were too busy speculating in overpriced housing to think about basic utilities. Which means it's us. We're the reason Flint doesn't have clean water.

I know the '87 Treaties are divisive because half the voting bloc skipped the meeting in favor of that coke party, but a quick reminder: we did promise black people that we wouldn't use the n-word anymore. Here are the reasons why:

1. We decided not to be that lazy.

2. We are white people. We are not "cool." We look ridiculous trying.

3. In the wide world of insults, "gibbering cockwomble" is more fun to say

And here's what we negotiated in return:

1. EVERYTHING.

So I'd now like to open the floor for discussion on two separate motions:

First, we have a motion to create a new White-Person Category as a punitive measure. Membership in the new category of So Lame Even White People Won't Fuck You will be automatically conferred on any man over the age of 25 who uses a racial slur in casual conversation. Category members will be relegated to their own tables at every white-people function, and any woman seen associating with them will be themselves added to the category. This way we can preserve the sacred right of free association while also having a handy way to make clear who's lost the right to be listened to on racial matters.

Second, we have a motion to punch Richard Spencer in the face, so whichever Olive Garden has him in it, please vote amongst yourselves and let us know whether we need to drive over there ourselves or whether you'll handle it.

We will now break out into discussion groups. There is watered-down fruit punch and a plate of pecan sandies at every table. Please keep in mind that the conference on the question of Donald Trump has been pushed off for two weeks because we're having trouble finding enough EMTs for the final grudge match, which we expect will have at least as many casualties as the Abraham Lincoln Approval Conference did.

[ WaPo ]