Block Party, Redux - While

Block Party, Redux - While the music was great, and the cause (contributing to the maintenance of the grand old Basilica) is certainly a good one, the politically-liberal Catholic leadership still uses its position to coddle a lot of very dubious causes. So I fully expected to see every entrance to the fenced-off festival area to be plastered with "The Basilica of St. Mary's Bans Guns On These Premises". Enh. No biggie - I doubt I'd have brought one if I had one.

But among the various food and vendor booths spread along the "midway" alongside the Basilica, I found exactly one "political" booth; Citizens for a Supine Safer Minnesota.

Leave aside for a moment the fact that the materials they were handing out were both stupid and inflammatory (their "Minnesotans Against Getting Shot" buttons are an especially Skoglundesque brand of idiocy) or just plain wrong (marking up their literature to highlight the factual errors is an exercise in patience and trying to avert Carpal Tunnel Syndrome); no, the dumbest thing about the booth was the banner at the top of the awning, which said in three-inch letters:

Welcome To Texas Minnesota

...with "Minnesota" in fake handwritten script, as if scrawled in place of the crossed-out Texas.

Beneath all the cynical factual legerdemain behind CSM, the most noxious thing about the group is that they honestly believe that tighter gun controls are a sign of intelligence; that states with more liberal gun laws can't be as "smart" as Minnesotans (or as we used to be, anyway). Their spokespeople gave speeches replete with references to the "Cold Mississippi" we'd turn into if we passed the Minnesota Personal Protection Act - as if Texans or Mississippians (or people from any of the 32 other shall-issue or no-permit states, for that matter) cared any less about their state, or fellow human beings, or were somehow just not as smart as the rest of us.

If this sort of stereotyping were aimed at anyone but white Texans or Mississippians (and the stereotype of the concealed carry permittee, carefully reinforced by the likes of the Star Tribune, is that of a middle-aged white male), it'd be justifiably condemned.

I know Texans. Hell, I'm related to a few. I've been to Texas (even spent time at the dreaded Enron when it was just Enron, not "Enron!"), and the people didn't seem any dumber than Minnesotans. I met bigots and rednecks, and they didn't seem any redder-necked or bigottier than the masses of yobs I used to entertain in bars in Brooklyn Center and Fergus Falls.

I'm from North Dakota, for crying out loud - a concealed carry state that's "dumb" enough to figure out how to build an educational system that's tied with Minnesota's at the top of the heap, for 40% less money.

I was raised, in my naive youth, to believe that conceit would eventually be its own undoing. I know that justice is rare in this world - but deep in the back of my mind, I still fervently believe that the sort of overweening conceit that CSM practices will come back to bite it. In some ways, I think it already has - the bill passed into law, after all.

Time will do it, of course, without any need of my help. But it's galling to see this sort of - let's call a spade a spade - bigotry, being passed off as acceptable by anyone...

...much less in the shadow of the house of God.

Posted by Mitch at July 12, 2003 06:42 PM