Emmy

I didn’t watch the Creative Arts Awards on E! last night. I completely forgot in the chaos of driving home amidst an increasingly tense and racially polarizing city. As I tweeted about yesterday, the gf and I were driving home when an unreal scene of road rage and racial tension broke out around us. And while the individual pieces of what happened may not be as clearly related to the tensions exposed by the 912er movement, I would contend that the polarized radio coverage and the relentless call to racial allegiances made an indelible mark on the day and set the stage for much of the atmosphere that made this moment possible.

What happened: Two white, male, yuppies, honked at each other from behind us, then sped up, cutting off several other cars, so they could idle beside one another at the light. Windows rolled down and screaming ensued. About what, I don’t know. The sound of Air America in our car, mingled with that of conservative pundits pouring out of one of theirs. The story, the same: 912ers gathering in DC. On the corner, some “gang bangers”, who usually presented as your average teen boys chilling until someone comes by for drugs or somebody tells them someone did something they should not, started pointing and laughing at the yuppies. A baby, sensing the tension around her started to cry. I turned to find her and my eyes locked with a red-faced, large, older, white man glaring into our car. Suddenly I felt my gf’s hand slip around mine, like the boi she is, she reached to steady me. This time, I checked the angry man with a cock of my professorial eye and he started saying something with such vehemence there was spittle running down the glass of his pick up (a lot of people drive them here, it isn’t specific to him) but I did manage to find the crying baby in the turning lane, a cute little cherubesque black child with obligatory hair poofs. Her mother looked nervous. Looking down on this scene was the ever menacing Glenn Beck, a billboard that loomed so large one could not miss the message calling us all to hate. The light turned green and the screech of tires from the road ragers in front was only slightly more distracting than the man beside us who intentionally veered into our lane, missing us only b/c we veered into an oncoming traffic lane, where the only person higher up in the sky then Beck had thankfully made a way. As his pick up passed us, we saw the bumper sticker “tell Osama BinObama I want My Country Back!” screamed back at us as loudly as the 912ers on the radio.

When we got home, I locked the doors and checked the windows. The ritual taking on special significance on this night. And we curled up with our ice cream and our Chinese take out, the reason we had bought them, to watch the Emmy’s, long forgotten.

So here is to the show that we came to so late that we couldn’t help save it’s ratings, but are so grateful that it won 3 of 4 Creative Arts Emmy’s.

If the world were as colorful and whimsical as Pushing Diasies, I’m sure that surreal traffic scene would never have occurred. Perhaps instead of a beer at the White House, we could all just go sit at the Pie Hole with the pie maker and his friends . . .

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