Sounds like somebody watched GLEE

... last night.*

Ta-Nehisi takes on the bullies, remembering -- in a particularly personal way, as these campaigns tend to go -- his own history as a beat-up black boy in Baltimore.

When I was kid, I got jumped for not [sic] walking home without enough friends, and for being in the wrong neighborhood. I got teased for everything from the texture of my hair to the vintage of my kicks. All of this was horrible, but it was very different from being bumrushed or demeaned for being gay. Every kid I knew had to take measures to secure his safety home, and I don't know a black kid today who didn't get snapped on. In West Baltimore, at least, getting jumped was democratic.

Myself, I wonder if the "It Gets Better" hugfest is just an easy substitute for some of our more visible professional gay people to avoid the heavy lifting it would take to ensure that their societal protections and advantages are indeed extended to all Americans.

That might mean questioning the liberal political establishment, and recognizing that the fight doesn't necessarily end when your own ... needs are met. Since many of these figures -- particularly those raised Catholic -- might still retain a bit of that religious upbringing, the non-catholic patchwork of legal rights might just be weighing a bit guiltily on their consciousnesses, hence the need to shame others who disagree with the need for the hugfest, which of course, wouldn't be 'specially relevant if the laws indeed were written and enforced equally.

This seems more effective to me than getting creative in a personal video, but then what do I know? Never was beat-up myself; victims in general who embrace that status kinda turn my stomach; and I think one day soon, we'll get past the balkanized background fluff that superficially separates us (the beat up black boys from Baltimore selling their stories today, and the white freshman who see no way out but to jump. That's entertainment?)

Shouldn't we be teaching them more about Jamie Nabozny and their legal rights than commiserating on how bad it was back when we were but boys? I guess if you're an attorney, you think of different tools for a job than if you're a professional pundit selling page views or sex tips to those just starting out?

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* I flicked the channels and caught a good minute and a half: the beat-up gay boy character was finally confronting his big jock tormentor in the lockerrom, when the bigger boy swooped down to kiss the littler one. Aww... it's too bad that a show presumably about singing and high school choirs has become a current events propaganda fest. Suspect if it keeps up with these ... progressive fantasy storylines, the show will go the way of American Idol once the gayness goes on the offense, with in-your-face accusations of categorical discrimination** and special needs victim groupings.

** Ironically, in Ashland, Wisconsin, Jamie Nabozny appears to have been more protected in the Catholic schools, where rules were taught and discipline effectively enforced. Unfortunately, Catholic education there only extended to 8th grade (no high school), so the sanctuary eventually ended; these instances of abuse occured -- and were ignored until legally challenged-- in the public schools. The secular public schools.

Imagine that.