I was at the doc yesterday for a routine blood pressure check – my last reading had been too LOW – and was talking to the lovely nurse Donna. When I gave her the short version of the fifteen-month boring saga known as Walter’s Knee -- not to be confused with Claire's Knee, the lovely film by Eric Rohmer -- ND commented that I sounded like such a cynic, but I clearly wasn’t, since I was a nice guy.
“Wait a minute,” I cried, “how dare you call me a nice guy?”
More to the point though, can one not be a nice guy AND be a cynic? I think one can. I think I can. I think I am.
The world is going to hell in a Target shopping basket and we here in the US are leading the way. Most Americans are overweight, unintellectual, easily pleased by television drivel and unschooled in the arts – but that doesn’t mean I’m not nice to them.
I learned my nice skills in the restaurant business. I never taught my waiters that the customer was always right. They knew better. The customer is dead wrong a lot of the time. But the customer has the right to believe he’s right. So be nice to him, sniveling idiot though he may be.
Cynicism and niceness go hand in hand, say I.
Homophobia and heroism do not.
Going up against the Red Cross is like going up against the Boy Scouts or apple pie. Luckily, I love the latter, for I have fought both the former. The Boy Scouts are homophobes, adding to the bullying that’s been much discussed here of late. The Red Cross doesn’t bully gay people so much as demean them.
Every time I see a poster announcing a Red Cross blood drive I want to grab a thick-tipped felt marker and add, “Gays need not apply” since the Red Cross, which always needs blood donors, never needs them enough to accept my blood. Men who have had sex with other men are not allowed to give blood, not if the venerable American Red Cross has anything to do with it.
So here’s what I sent back to them today in response to the solicitation they sent us:
Note: for the record, yes, I know that the Red Cross is following FDA policy and I have read that they, by law, must. But what would happen if the Red Cross did the right thing and refused to follow this homophobic, outdated policy? Well, of course. The FDA would drop it, post haste.
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RIP Levon, and thanks for the music.
I was recently re-reading "And the Band Played On" and the Red Cross was one of the holdouts during the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, not wanting to do what needed to be done then because the cost (not lives but money) was too high. I hold no truck with the Red Cross since I found out they have a 'for profit' branch that deals with blood. You know, the stuff people GIVE them. Nope. Not having anything to do with them.
ReplyDeleteLevon will be missed.