July 26, 2004

• Valley Trash and proud!

  
  

  I think SuSu mentioned the great Valley trash controversy.  If  you missed her blog, here it is in a nutshell–some woman (D. L. Mooney) sent an unsigned email to one of our sleazier state legislators (Ben Stevens–Alaska’s answer to Dubya, as he is the idiot son of an over-achieving dad–in Ben’s case, his dad is Ted Stevens, one of the most powerful men in Congress).  She called him a “whore” for getting $300,000 in consulting fees from private industry–I’d call  the money bribes, but what do I know?  Anyway, he wrote back (in a particularly ungrammatical email) that she was just ” more valley trash.”  He referred to the Mat-Su Valley, where many of us live. We prefer the term “valley rats,” but never mind.)

  
  

  A veritable shitstorm ensued–the Anchorage daily paper implied he was unfit for public office (duh!), many other politicians publicly criticised him and called for him to apologize.  I have to give him credit, he is standing by his statement, but like many other sleazoids,  he is blaming the media for making his deeds known instead of taking responsibility for said deeds. (Mooney forwarded the exchange to the media, which is how the whole thing became public in the first place.)

  
  

  Then someone started printing up t-shirts saying “Valley trash and proud of it” or something like that.  The shirts go for $22 (plus postage and handling) a pop–to date, he has sold like 1,000 or so of them.

  
  

  This is ironic on several counts.  One, true Valley trash would never (would, hell–we couldn’t afford it!) pay $22 dollars for  fucking t-shirt.  We get ours at thrift shops for a dollar or less each.   Plus, the guy who did this owns a graphics company and is prexy-elect of the Wasilla C of C–he doesn’t even live in the Valley, fer gawd’s sake.  Okay, technically, Wasilla is in the valley, but to us true valley rats, Wasillans are just more soft city people.

  
  

  Some asshole DJ in Anchorage bought one, proclaiming that he “was one of us,” then proceeded to make a joke about some guy in Palmer with three teeth.  Many true valley rats are missing numerous  teeth, like my sweety who is missing about half of hers. Her ex had welfare pull all of his, then discovered to his horror and chagrin that welfare would not pay for dentures.  It is a sad and pitiful sight to see him try to gum beef jerky. I have almost all of mine, however, but I have been known to go a month between showers.

  
  

  I am waiting with bated breath to read the letters to the editor that will ensue.  The paper called me on Wednesday to confirm authorship of mine, and the caller said they got a large volumn of letters on the subject.  I assume they will save up and devote a whole page to them, as the paper has done so befor with hot topics.  I don’t know if they will print mine or not, so I will wait until Monday and I can get back on the library computer before I finish this.  As I write, it is Friday morning.

  
  

  UPDATE:  Well, they printed the letter, but censored the “whore” comment–I said that to call Stevens a whore is to insult whores.  I was not surprised, the timid folks at the paper  have censored my letters before–the last time, they cut out the word “half-breed”–I was referring to myself as a half-breed Indian–I guess that isn’t politically correct enough.  Well, fuck that shit, I say.

  
  

  Anyway, they did print my comment that the good Senator’s language proved that he was as ignorant of the English language as he was of ethics.  Several other writers zeroed in on his lack of proper grammar and spelling.  One real moron–an Anchorauguan who moved to Washington, D.C.– said that the real problem was lack of urban planning in Wasilla.  (WTF!?!)  Someone else pointed out his naivete in thinking of email as “private,” which was a very good point, I thought.  Evidently, Ben is stupid and clueless, besides being crooked and arrogant. Only one writer defended him.  Obviously a die-hard Republican.  Anyway, the Wasilla dude is still making money off it, and we true Valley rats are still amused and bemused by the whole thing, and the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and as of the latest newspaper report, 4.1 million acres of our forests have gone up in smoke.  As the firefighters say, black spruce is “gasoline on a stick.”

  • 6:12 pm
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