Bloody Politics

Once again, I've taken it upon myself to lie in the title of this post. However, it is a half truth and therefore only a quarter lie and a quarter grey area. My feelings towards politics generally are in the hue of "bloody," but I was referring instead to the most foul excuse for a book any tree hugging, bullshit Stanford degree-having, retardess could come up with. I am, of course, talking about "Blood Politics: Race, Culture, and Identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma," the book I'm required to read for my cultural anthropology class. Doesn't that just make you wanna take out the flail and have at your backside?

Let's break this down:

The title starts out like it's going to rock your world. "Blood Politics" , YEAH! How bitching is that? This book is going to inform me about the darker side of politics with all the assassinations, hidden agendas, and secret societies. Alas! It was not to be. It only goes downhill from here and that hill just became mountainous because Little Miss Author thought to trick us with her clever eye catching title.

Next comes "Race, Culture, and Identity." What the hell am I going to do with that? Once that first word is out of the gates, like the stallion ridden by the jockey from hell (Gilbert Godfrey), you know the previous two words were utter falsitudes.

Race is a word that only works when used with dogs...or rats. Otherwise it's just the another word to tell me that I should feel guilty for an act of the world decades ago.

Culture, in and of itself, does not bring up horrible connotations to my mind. So...meh.

Identity. Here's a tough one to figure out. On one hand, identity theft, which is cool if you've got to infiltrate a Soviet bunker as James Bond. On the other, if this is about all that "finding yourself" identity, I may upchuck. Projectile upchuck.

If we view this title as a steep playground slide into Hell, we have already slid into the heat and can just now feel the flames licking our toes. Because now we've reached "in the Cherokee Nation" on our whirlwind tour of this macabre title. I cannot describe in sufficient eloquence the horror, the undulating waves of terror and pain that accompany that phrase. As a people, I have no problem with the Cherokees. As a topic of study, I will murder them. Without mercy. Sorry Cherokees.

As the title moves on down the slide, past the first high plateau of "blood politics" then down the curve to "race, culture, and identity" to the small depression at the bottom "in the cherokee nation" we, as a figurative idea, fly off that small depression and sail through the air, like a missile from a medieval trebuchet, straight into Beezlebub's gaping maw with the discouraging, hope draining, warmth stealing phrase "of Oklahoma." Fuck me. Oklahoma? Really? No one honestly sees that word and thinks, " Hey! I love that place! I'm a real sucker for tumbleweeds."

I'm just trying to avoid reading it. A scathing criticism of the title seemed like the best way to go about it. Anybody watch the season premiere of Heroes? I did. I like it, generally. Basically a modern day X-men, in the way that Latter Day Saints are modern day Lutherans. Which is to say, more crazy.