1
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OK so, this is for the red states.

2
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Stupid.

3
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[laughter from the crowd]

4
00:00:09,712 --> 00:00:12,009
My uncle Melvin is stupid.

5
00:00:12,009 --> 00:00:13,107
He voted for George Bush

6
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hell, he voted for Bush Sr.

7
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when something like this, read my lips, no new taxes.

8
00:00:17,557 --> 00:00:23,133
That time, like this time, the Democrats were not speaking a working people's language.

9
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Oh sure, their candidates' arguments were all nuanced and complex

10
00:00:26,034 --> 00:00:28,299
but what the hell does that mean to my uncle Melvin?

11
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Whose parents sat him in front of a television since before he could walk, why?

12
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Because it's the option for exhausted labourers.

13
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People whose hands will never fully soften

14
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no matter how much pumice they apply the skin grows that way.

15
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People keeping the bunion pad companies in business

16
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from standing in bad shoes on assembly lines for lifetimes.

17
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People whose primary source of entertainment is, no stretch, the television.

18
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Because after a day on your feet what a body needs is rest.

19
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Exercise is something people do who sit at computers all day.

20
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It was from the television that my uncle Melvin learned to absorb information

21
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in highly emotional, over-simplified soundbites,

22
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so his very head works that way,

23
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but because he's stupid? No.

24
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Because he's brainwashed.

25
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Brainwashed and kept poor by underpaying his labour

26
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from the time he dropped out to support his sisters

27
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to today, when he can't even afford to buy his wife a proper set of teeth.

28
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I'm not kidding here, and it isn't funny.

29
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My aunt Juanita has permanent sores in her mouth from her ill-fitting dentures

30
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which by the way without them?

31
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she can't even go to the bathroom in the night for fear of someone seein' her.

32
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Shame comes standard in my family.

33
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My uncle Melvin is powerless to purchase his wife some relief

34
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but we offer him a presidential "choice":

35
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a guy with a fancy education or someone who sounds like a down home boy promising no new taxes,

36
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no more bite out of this backbone that ain't gonna outlast the mortgage on the trailer.

37
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This is not fiction.

38
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The trailer is white and he'd like to get a fence to keep the rabbits out of the pansies.

39
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Melvin is gonna vote his pocketbook.

40
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Cause maybe Juanita can get some teeth.

41
00:01:51,979 --> 00:01:53,578
Think about your own.

42
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Touch them with your tongue.

43
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Now imagine the person you love the most live without them.

44
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Face the world and try to feel beautiful or worthy.

45
00:02:00,378 --> 00:02:03,725
Melvin is gonna vote for the guy who promises to put more power in his pocket.

46
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If the Democrats haven't learned that yet, then they're the dummies not the people who didn't vote for them.

47
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Have I mentioned that my aunt Juanita can't read.

48
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I am a slim generation away from not being able to decipher my own ballot.

49
00:02:15,117 --> 00:02:19,650
But yeah, Melvin responds to over-simplified, deep-fried versions of the truth, but why?

50
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Cause it's been his diet for as long as he can remember.

51
00:02:21,891 --> 00:02:23,611
"Have some turkey" he says to me at Thanksgiving

52
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and then he covers the gap in his own smile with his palm.

53
00:02:26,093 --> 00:02:28,243
I slather my potatoes in Juanita's gravy,

54
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and for shame will not interject my opinion

55
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when at his table in front of his bounty he asks me to bow my head and pray, why?

56
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Because what right do I have to judge their source of hope, really?

57
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During Grace, I know that my uncle's god is someone who hates me and my depraved coastal ways,

58
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so once again I am torn.

59
00:02:45,566 --> 00:02:48,118
Acutely aware of how far apart are both my homes

60
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My hand in Melvin's my cheek warms with cowardice

61
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over having left my whole family behind in search of my own freedom.

62
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Just as quick, the other cheek cools with dread at the hate that is blooming in my new home

63
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from stealth bias and a full body disgust

64
00:03:00,753 --> 00:03:05,645
my liberal friends are condemning entire red regions as idiots incapable of nourishing themselves

65
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out of the rickets that has rotted their brains.

66
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Not new, certainly, but shocking as hell out of the mouths of people with whom I shared values.

67
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More than ever, I am straddling two boats hell bent of rowing in opposite directions.

68
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I wake up sweaty with the pressure to choose and choking on the privilege it is to have the option in the first place.

69
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Some days, I am side by side with my chosen, if depraved, queer family.

70
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Damn right, I say, fucken homophobes.

71
00:03:32,885 --> 00:03:36,642
I think about the last public hate crime that happened in my midwest town and feel sick.

72
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Two gay men, sleeping, wake to find their house being painted with "FAGGOTS GO HOME".

73
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When I think about how this coulda happened, I remember who used to live there.

74
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The Geiger girls,

75
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whose father and uncle worked around silos all their lives.

76
00:03:49,329 --> 00:03:52,516
But during the 80's farm crisis "accidentally" walked into one,

77
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where overcome by fumes each died in his brother's arms so their families might make it on the insurance money.

78
00:03:58,538 --> 00:04:02,902
Which they did for about a decade before Jim and Joseph looking for a weekend refuge from the city

79
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bought the whole farm plus house for a screamin' deal.

80
00:04:06,146 --> 00:04:08,229
As artists they had plans to redecorate.

81
00:04:08,229 --> 00:04:12,008
And I quote: "Have these people ever heard of PAINT??"

82
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Yeah, we have.

83
00:04:14,068 --> 00:04:18,616
And sometimes what gets called homophobia is a little more complicated than that.

84
00:04:18,616 --> 00:04:21,592
Closer to home, I think about my Seattle neighbourhood gone white in seven years.

85
00:04:21,592 --> 00:04:25,666
Not so when I moved in, but then again, white dykes are the first wave of gentrification.

86
00:04:25,666 --> 00:04:29,319
I sit with that in my pocket and look down at my rapidly separating feet,

87
00:04:29,319 --> 00:04:32,744
both boats spilling over with white people.

88
00:04:32,744 --> 00:04:36,737
From this position, I have this to respectfully say to my queer peers:

89
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Gay marriage is something the privileged, specifically college educated people, can afford to long for,

90
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and it feels like a middle class agenda.

91
00:04:43,345 --> 00:04:47,821
For me, given a choice, I'd sell out my middle class peers any day for equal pay for equal work

92
00:04:47,821 --> 00:04:49,435
but not in the way the feminists thought of it

93
00:04:49,435 --> 00:04:51,271
---which by the way preserved the class order ---

94
00:04:51,271 --> 00:04:54,505
but in the way that says an hour is an hour is an hour.

95
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I don't care if you're pushing a broom or paper, you outta get paid the same.

96
00:04:57,395 --> 00:05:00,600
If we mean what we say in this country that all men are created equal

97
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then it follows that we all have the same relationship to time,

98
00:05:03,254 --> 00:05:06,599
that it's precious, and<u>_</u> you gotta be compensated.

99
00:05:06,599 --> 00:05:09,758
So, this is to say that I don't think we were defeated because of the middle state homophobes.

100
00:05:09,758 --> 00:05:13,457
We were defeated because we haven't begun to address working people's needs

101
00:05:13,457 --> 00:05:15,835
let alone truly align ourselves with people of colour.

102
00:05:15,835 --> 00:05:18,444
We let the right use us as a smokescreen to their real agendas:

103
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keeping the poor poor and eroding civil rights of people of colour.

104
00:05:21,737 --> 00:05:25,993
If all queers starting today, devoted our lives full time to economic justice,

105
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I would not be surprised if we'd have our gay marriage sooner than Melvin and Juanita will get that fence.

106
00:05:31,121 --> 00:05:35,871
And if all Democrats starting today devoted their party to an hour is an hour?

107
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Well I'd guarantee that every toothless bastard in dumfuck everywhere would vote for that

108
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before you could say read my lips

109
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NEW. CLASS. ORDER.

110
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[applause]