Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Whose View
So I live in Bay View, which was its own little town for maybe three years way back in the day, before it decided it really wanted to be part of Milwaukee. Bay View is the second neighborhood south of the city. The first is Walker's Point, which is trendy, but a bit rough. Bay View, then, is far enough away to be fairly safe and quiet. But now we're getting trendy.
There was this article in the town's weekly liberal rag, the Shepherd Express, about how popular Bay View is becoming. And the writer made note of how Bay View's art and music scene was enhanced because of the higher-than-average number of gay people who live here. The article even mentioned Bay View's funny little nickname, Gay View.
Well, now, as you can imagine, the community is up in arms over being labeled Gay View. All the young soccer moms are proclaiming how terribly prejudiced it is that we can't all be accepting and stop labeling people by their sexual preference, and blah. And blah. And blah, blah, blah, blah.
As far as this observer can tell . . . the only people pissed off about being labeled Gay View are straight people. The neighborhood is pretty dominated by the other team, so the nickname fits. Has a funny little ring to it, too. It just proves my point: people want to be offended. They want it to be the 60s again. They want to stand up and fight the big powers that be. But there's nobody to fight. "Got a revolution?" as the song goes.
There was this article in the town's weekly liberal rag, the Shepherd Express, about how popular Bay View is becoming. And the writer made note of how Bay View's art and music scene was enhanced because of the higher-than-average number of gay people who live here. The article even mentioned Bay View's funny little nickname, Gay View.
Well, now, as you can imagine, the community is up in arms over being labeled Gay View. All the young soccer moms are proclaiming how terribly prejudiced it is that we can't all be accepting and stop labeling people by their sexual preference, and blah. And blah. And blah, blah, blah, blah.
As far as this observer can tell . . . the only people pissed off about being labeled Gay View are straight people. The neighborhood is pretty dominated by the other team, so the nickname fits. Has a funny little ring to it, too. It just proves my point: people want to be offended. They want it to be the 60s again. They want to stand up and fight the big powers that be. But there's nobody to fight. "Got a revolution?" as the song goes.
