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From the C-D TOS. Yes, it should have been reported. If it was via DM, there's a record.
How about we mind our business and get back on topic? That is, afterall, in the TOS.
DocJ? Now that I have semi-recovered from my dentist operation and the post-meds, I am going to trust myself to approach the keyboard and post a few things with at least a semblence of confidence I won't make a total fool of myself or get an infraction notice for doing something I have no recollection of doing! LOL
Anyway, just a couple of rejoinders to your always well-written and ponderous posts...
Quote:
Originally Posted by doctorjef
The self-obsession of Texans with Texanism and Texas is truly absurdly hyperbolic and I say that as someone who once suffered from that disease myself.
I must FIRST of all ask, out of curiosity, when did you recover? PLEASE don't tell me the catalyst was too many years of living in yankee-land. (just kidding! )
Seriously, you remind me a lot of a very good friend of mine (I think I have talked about him to you in DM's before), who I first met when we both wrote for the campus newspaper (he was editor and I was news-editor). We became good friends just because we both enjoyed good discussion and debate, even though we didn't agree on much at all. He was born here, but was a flaming liberal who lived most of his life-elsewhere. He had a love-hate relationship with Texas/South..and even the United States at large. It lent to some great "kill off a case of beer and pound the table arguments" LOL
Anyway, as relates to your general theme on this post, he felt the same way as concerns what he saw as self-obcession and hyperbole in this regard. Eventually, we analyzed and worked it out to that it really simply boiled down a different "vision and outlook." And that we often just talked past each other because we did proceed from different premises. Not only in this realm, but just about all others.
In a nutshell, what you (and he) see/saw (hmmmm see-saw?) as a self-concept and provincialism which often goes hyperbolic reflects negatively on Texas and Texans simply because the basic world vision tends to be more "cosmopolitan" oriented. That, to feel otherwise, is to be hopelessly limited in vision and scope. BTW -- I hasten to add I am NOT trying to put his thoughts into yours...just that this is the closest I can come to it from personal real time experience.
Anyway, to me (and those like me, I suppose...although I am not speaking for anyone else), such a world vision (opposite his) makes perfectly good sense. That is to say, that it is only natural to feel a first tier attachment to the place of ones birth and "place in the cosmos." I simply can't fathom feeling a greater "duty" to an abstract "world community" or, even, to be honest, a greater one to the concept of "Union above all in the USA government sense"... than I do to the real flesh and blood ties of first loyalty to my own state and region and the localized traditions and customs and folkways -- even questionable myths -- which I grew up with and am comfortable with and embrace. But it is not just "comfort food" in a purely emotional sense; it is also a vision which has been rationally examined and embraced in an "academic" realm as well.
OK...yeah, I know I took the long way around the barn (as I often do! LOL), but the point was to just establish a premise which I think can both agree on...as in the underlying vision is the real key to the outward manifestations of what position we take on any particular issue.
Quote:
There's a difference between pride in and affection for the place that one calls home on the one hand and uncritical and hubristic jingoism on the other.
There is a truth in this, I will admit, but it comes down to exactly where this line is drawn. Which is the point of my long-winded speel above! LOL
What some might see as a negative expression of unthinking repitition of slogans and blind-faith, others might see as a natural and positive expression of what holds any coherent society together. All a matter of the underlying world vision...
Quote:
Too many Texans, and certainly on this forum, too often appear to display too much of the latter rather than the former. It turns Texans into an unpleasant stereotype and brings disrepute on the people of the Lone Star State.
To bring a lighter note into it, Doc -- and maybe you won't disagree with this too much -- I respectfully suggest you might be looking at it a little too critically and a little too seriously? By that, I mean that perhaps you are overlooking a very important component of "Texas bragadoccio (sp?").
The so-called stereoptype of the blowhard, boasting, Texan does, for sure (like most stereotypes) have a strong root in reality. Yet? I think the vast majority of us take it with a grain of salt...and even poke fun at ourselves. There is a sense of humor instrinsically interwoven into it all. We (in the general sense) don't take ourselves too seriously. Otherwise, paradoxically, the whole stereotype would fall apart. Hell, we laugh at ourselves as much as anybody else. For instance, I don't know a single Texan that doesn't crack up over the following one liner I first heard from a guy from Georgia:
Q: What do you get when you kick the sh*t out of a Texan?
A: An empty pair of cowboy boots!
Finally, I think it is important to note that the reason many of us so reflexively defend our state against critisism can pretty much be summed up by what AlGreen noted earlier. That is, who doesn't/wouldn't defend their home against outside attacks? Especially if it is from those who move to Texas -- love our milk and honey and opportunities -- but can do nothing but find eternal fault and insist upon turning it into a carbon-copy of the very place they ruined and fled? Upon what grounds and rationale are they to tell us what is wrong with us? I think THAT is a major reason why we Texans can get very defensive. It is not the critisism so much as it is the source of the critisism.
When I first moved here back in 2003 I used to hang out with my friends downtown. I did that for about 2 years, and then never again since. I got tired of trails of vomit all over the streets when I would leave the warehouse district (which by the way, CLAIMS to be for the older crowd, but little college kids always get in) It's almost like an entire square mile is dedicated to idiots in their late teens to mid 20's who just wanna act as stupid possible. And yes, the rednecks come out down there in FULL FORCE most nights. I NEVER have any of that happen up in Dallas, Addison, Plano, or even Irving. Oh BTW, I don't goto any bars in Denton, because they remind me too much of bars in Austin
Quote:
Originally Posted by artsyguy
The parties in Austin suck. I was there for an entire year. Everybody looks and acts the same. They copy-cat each other like 2 year old children. The only good party in Austin is the Brazilian Carnival.
Invite me to your parties so that I can critique them on this forum. Ha ha.
The house parties I went to in Austin were extremely quiet and cliquish. Not my scene since I don't give a flying bleep about burnt orange or tubing down a filthy river.
Dallas does have a warm "at home" vibe. I prefer to party at art spaces since everyone knows each other and they are a little more worldly and it's mostly all free.
[quote=DANNYY;18350147]
I don't know all too many people in Dallas, but I know enough to get invites to house parties during spring break and boat parties over at Lake Worth during Spring Break. Dallas is great, I love the city, always said its like my second home after Houston and that's saying something, Dallas just have a very "home" type of feel when I'm there maybe because I used to live there once or maybe because its so similar to Houston and I feel like I know it well, but I prefer Houston more so to it myself. From Lake Livingston to Surfside Beach, I know Houston like its the back of my hand, and over the years have come to appreciate the city for what it has. I have no complaints on Dallas but the only thing its missing is a coastline and beaches.[/QUOTE]
I agree I've never in my life scene a redneck partying in Dallas or Addison ... I always see people wearing expensive jewelry, fur coats, and gowns -- to fashionable jeans and plain fashionable T-shirts ... when you go out in Dallas you feel elegant and pure... when you go out in Austin or Denton you feel filthy for some reason ... probably the smell of vomit and the horrible looking people.
Denton is a different story than Dallas ... it's clash of the buffoonish weirdos there in that town too....terrible roads...terrible traffic...drunkards ... druggies ... etc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by eepstein
And yes, the rednecks come out down there in FULL FORCE most nights. I NEVER have any of that happen up in Dallas, Addison, Plano, or even Irving. Oh BTW, I don't goto any bars in Denton, because they remind me too much of bars in Austin[/B]
TexasReb -- good post and that's exactly as I understand you to feel about matters of loyalty to home, place, tradition, etc. I think one of the problematic aspects of this, however, is when it gets into an attitude of "exceptionalism", as in the sense of American exceptionalism, for example - the idea that our country is so different to everyone else in the world that we don't have to play by the same rules and that we are exempted from the same sort of consequences of our actions that any other country/society would experience. There's a certain segment of contributors on this forum who seem to take the unreflective attitude that "we're so damn much better and so uniquely different from everyone else that we can play by a different set of rules and ignore/escape the realities that other States struggle with". There's also this silly attitude of "hating on" Californians and various other out-of-staters. I actually got tired of these attitudes at least a few years before I moved away from Austin. I probably had a quite nationalistic Texan attitude up to about 45 years of age and especially in my late twenties and through my thirties. There are many personal factors in the evolution away from that, though one thing that would be easy to identify in the years since Ann Richards left office is the increasingly polarized nature of political culture both in Texas and in the USA as a whole. In the current social and political climate it might be easy to appreciate that my sympathies with Texas as a body politic and "Texanism" as a social ideology might be considerably strained. Well, this is a complicated topic and I'm afraid a limited response on my part has already excessively put the emphasis on politics and social conservatism as opposed to the issue of an attitude of Texas chauvinism. I'm not sure, however, that the more blatant and blustering expressions of the latter aren't habitually linked to the more reactionary and unreflective political and social trends within the State (this would likewise be true of the facile patriotism and American exceptionalism of someone like Sarah Palin, so again I'd emphasise this isn't a strictly Texas phenomeon -- here again we come back, however, to the idea of Texans as the "Super-Americans" who tend to exhibit in a more pronounced form national characteristics that are operative in Americans generally).
By the way, I do know about the virtues of paragraph breaks, but these ideas were so linked that I was reluctant to separate them into multiple paragraphs.
Location: East Texas, with the Clan of the Cave Bear
3,266 posts, read 5,633,404 times
Reputation: 4763
Quote:
Originally Posted by doctorjef
By the way, I do know about the virtues of paragraph breaks, but these ideas were so linked that I was reluctant to separate them into multiple paragraphs.
It made for difficult read for my increasingly more handicapped sight processes! Please use your Texas manners and do the breakdown next time .
Why should we get all bent out of shape on what OTHER states think of Texans and Texans' pride in their state?
I don't hate out-of-staters at all, but I did get deathly sick of the attitudes of some of them.
During one of Midland's boom periods, we had transplants from all 50 states there, and it got very old listening to them b*tch about how much better it was "back home."
When I simply asked more than one, "If you hate it so much here, why in the world do you stay? Why don't you go somewhere where you'll be happy?"
Most of them just looked at me with a blank stare, or they mumbled something about needing a job, etc. It shut them up for awhile, but most of them eventually got back on the same old tangent.
Loving my home state does not make me chauvinistic, and neither does not caring less what people from other states think of us.
Politics in Texas are polarizing, and Ann Richards was no less polarizing than Bush or Perry.
She was a likeable old gal that I would have liked to have had lunch with in Austin, but I could not STAND her politics. But I admired some things about her despite the fact that I could never vote for her.
I agree I've never in my life scene a redneck partying in Dallas or Addison ... I always see people wearing expensive jewelry, fur coats, and gowns -- to fashionable jeans and plain fashionable T-shirts ... when you go out in Dallas you feel elegant and pure... when you go out in Austin or Denton you feel filthy for some reason ... probably the smell of vomit and the horrible looking people.
Denton is a different story than Dallas ... it's clash of the buffoonish weirdos there in that town too....terrible roads...terrible traffic...drunkards ... druggies ... etc.
"you feel..."? Couldn't you just say "I feel..."? BTW, fur coats? I don't find supporting the commercial fur industry to be particularly praiseworthy and fail to see how wearing or being around fur-wearing people would be a reason to "feel elegant and pure". "Expensive jewelry"? Could you express a more superficial criterion for evaluating people? The ostentacious displays of that kind in Dallas (and to some extent amongst the wealthier in Fort Worth) were summarized years ago by my partner who characterized such people in the DFW Metroplex as "caras plasticas" -- plastic faces. So the scenes in Austin and Denton are incongruent with your self-image; perhaps you could just state as much and leave it at that.
Cathy4017, let me tell you a little story that might exemplify the flip-side of your observations. My mother was a native Texan, born on a ranch in Denton County (my Dad's family immigrated from Louisiana to Winkler County during the oil boom of the 1920s when he was 4 years old). During the late 1970s-early 1980s my parents were living in Baltimore where my Dad had a professorship. They then returned to Texas so my Dad could retire fully vested in the TX Teacher retirement system, so he took a department chairmanship at UT-Tyler. Shortly after they moved to Tyler and before they had their license plates changed out, my mother was stopped at a red light in traffic and became aware that the guy in the pickup in the next lane was trying to get her attention and calling out something to her. She rolled down her window to hear him saying over and over, "Go home Yankee, go home Yankee..." Then the light turned green. Besides his presumption, my mother felt this ignoramus should be made aware that Maryland is an historically Southern state.
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