Saturday, February 19, 2005

Jingo bell, Jingo bell, Jingo all the way...

Jingo-ism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary: Extreme chauvinism or nationalism marked especially by a belligerent foreign policy.

The infamously jingoistic country music superstar, Toby Keith, is in town tonight for a concert at the Bradley Center. Opening up for Toby Keith would be the only person that can proudly stand to the right of him on the political spectrum, the Motorcity Madman himself, Ted Nugent. Who could forget his forgettable classic '70s hit, Cat Scratch Fever? Unfortunately, it so happened that I had to work tonight! By the way, to those who are out-of-the-loop, I have been working part-time (10-15 hours a week) at the Bradley Center's parking structure for about six months now, well-endowed with the supreme authority to tell people where they can (or cannot) park their cars.

Anyway, tonight did feel like a deja vu of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York last September. Though there weren't as many pickup trucks (along with the requisite shotgun rack in the back, Confederate flag window decal, and the longhorn hood ornament) as I thought they would be, an overwhelming majority of the cars, trucks, SUVs, and minivans were festooned with the Bush/Cheney 2004 stickers. I was thinking to myself, "There has to be a city record been broken here, maybe for the largest Republican gathering ever smack in the middle of downtown Milwaukee." Even the Bush rally/a-thousand-dollar-a-plate breakfast last November across the street at the US Cellular Arena didn't draw this much crowd. Granted that fifty bucks to be Shockin' Y'all (the title of his latest album) by Toby the Jingo is way cheaper than a thousand smackeroos needed to be Shocked and Awed by the bumbling Emperor Bush II.

Based on my perfunctory survey on the demographic of the concert-goers, it is safe to assume that White people with cowboy hats and boots comprised of the 99.8 percent of all the concert-goers. I did see at least three non-Whites among the teeming crowds, which accounted for the other 0.2 percent. Still, there is a strong chance that I could have mistaken those three people with a bunch of overly-tanned White folks. By the way, Toby the Jingo seems like a perfect future addition to the much disparaged Tolerance campaign that featured the "gay" SpongeBob SquarePant. Somebody needs to set SpongeBob straight (pun intended)! Can I suggest a red-white-blue Dingo costume for Toby the Jingo? FYI, a dingo is a rabid Australian wild dog.

Anyway, I did catch bits of Ted Nugent's act, which I'm sad to report that it didn't really live up to his reputation. Seemed pretty lame to me, without all the pyrotechnics and juvenile stunts. I guess they were afraid that the humongous American flag banner hung in the background would catch fire and be burned to smithereens, which would be deemed sacrilegious for these people. No red-blooded, freedom-loving Americans can be caught dead defacing the Old Glory; only sissy-ass, Commie-loving, America-hating liberals would stoop to doing something "deplorable" like that. Earth to so-called "freedom-loving" people, flag-burning is a protected speech, as embodied in the two landmark rulings of the US Supreme Court: The 1989 Texas v. Johnson and the 1990 US v. Eichman cases. But I digress.

Sidenote: If anyone is interested in reading the Bahasa Malaysia literary work written by non-Malays--in this case, Malaysian Indians--check out this website. I do wish that non-Malay BM writers could garner more publicity for their illuminating work, and to drag the language out of the sole dominance of the Malays. I bet that even most Malays cannot write half as good in BM as can these Indian writers. Including me.

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