Brookwrite

The cutting edge

by Doug Brook
Southern Shofar Columnist

This past month marked the end of four years of living in the Diaspora, which in the Cajun Yiddish dialect means "California". To say the least, it's been full of surprises.

Of course, there's been the recurring theme of surprised reactions that often include the polyphonic cry of disbelief, "AH-Luh-BAH-Mu?!?" The medley persists from acquaintances both old and new, none of whom can believe my heritage almost as much as they don't believe I'm not yet in my mid-thirties. See, I don't sound "southern" and the only time I've worn overalls in the past four years was during "One More Angel in Heaven" in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat".

And don't forget the additional reaction when the fact that I'm Jewish enters the equation. The clich� "There are Jews in Alabama?" is alive and well. "So, you must be Reform." Nope. "Well, you must be Conservative in name only." Nope, cheeseburgers not withstanding. "You couldn't have lived there very long." Just my whole life through college. But I spent summers in the northeast often. "Oh, that explains it."

Of course, I sometimes impress myself with my persistent pride in freely owning up to my southern heritage. After all, there are still a golden few who are intent on keeping the state I'm proud to call home from entering the 20th century until it ends.

But nobody out here minds that. Out here, anything new that makes Alabama look bad is just "expected." And here, if anyone knew who Mike Dubose was, they wouldn't be remotely surprised that the only reason he'll lose his job in six months will be due to an underachieving 1999 season. Most people out here couldn't even tell you where Alabama and Arkansas are without a map website.

I've weathered the occasional conversation with people about all the shootings this year, which often includes people turning to me asking "Hey, aren't you from there?" Of course, until Pelham, I always got to reply that they must be confusing Alabama with those less tamed states such as Georgia, Colorado, and (yes, indeed) California. It's nice to have been ahead of those states in another area besides the football polls (which would also be nice to see again, pass that message along to Dubose's successor for next season).

But I'm not here to discuss my home today. This is about California, the cutting edge state that brought you the sixties, the free speech movement, the tolerance movement, the permissiveness movement, the bowel movement, and almost every other movement you can think of, and many you never will.

This state has always been the enlightened one, the haven of tolerance, the indicator of where the rest of American society will eventually crawl to on four legs after another 30 years of cultural evolution. California was cutting edge in affirmative action (both the establishment and repealing thereof), medical marijuana, racial tolerance, moving sports franchises, actors acting like politicians, politicians acting like actors... It all started here.

Well, since I'm here, let me relate to you how this elegant, environmentally-conscious landscape looks based on the last month. Of course, we'll avert our eyes from Sacramento, the fourth-most common answer nationwide to "what's the capitol of California?", and the burning three synagogues there. (Yes, there are Jews in Sacramento.)

And we'll pull the shades as we fly south near L.A. (this time Los Angeles, not Lower Alabama) where a morally superior white guy shot some kids at a JCC camp. This doesn't count because he didn't mean to shoot the kids, they just got in the way when he aimed at the teenage counselor and the somewhat post-teenage receptionist. Good thing most of the kids were on a field trip at the Museum of Tolerance at the time. By that coincidence, the museum already fulfilled its charter of trying to minimize the negative impact of racial conflict. Does the guy realize the seeming paradox of using an Uzi to issue a rallying call to go out and kill Jews nationwide?

Safe in my office with the door closed, we can ignore the security guard at a nearby Silicon Valley biotech firm who was arrested a few days later for making repeated threatening calls to the Palo Alto JCC, including one right after and in praise of the SoCal shooting. Of course, in a long jail cell interview, the guy who went from libertarian to pseudo-supremacist (he doesn't think he's a white supremacist, just that western civilization is meant for whites only) said he didn't really want anyone to get hurt. The best part of this story was his father, who's been supporting his son's family for years. When the caller called his father to tell him about the arrest and told him he was sorry, his father said, "you should be".

Well, our tour of tomorrow's social landscape appears to have some technical difficulties today. I know this is not where things are headed. We've come so far and, by definition, we're more advanced than what has come before us. And everyone keeps telling me that, brussels sprouts aside, California is the Silicon Valley of enlightened, tolerant, progressive culture. Everyone is accepted here. We hate people who don't love their fellow man (no San Francisco jokes, please). Permissiveness is the cure-all, isn't it? These are isolated incidents and don't indicate anything that we have to do something about.

Okay, so a few days later and a few hundred miles east, at the first day of school at Columbine (home of the Colorado school shooting that wasn't really the start of it all), they found freshly painted swastikas in the bathrooms that, unfortunately, weren't in strategic places that would have made them good targets for facility patrons. And it appears, Toto, that the separation of church and state is not in Kansas anymore.

But look at the silver lining. More and more the communities here are banding together with a never-say-die attitude. Lip service has been paid, support expressed (for the good guys... the real good guys), and committees have been formed. I'd rather live here than anywhere right now because, frankly, it already takes 15 minutes to drive the two miles to my office, and my commute would be longer if I lived farther away.

It seems like the only time I have a decent tan is times like this when I'm no longer white or American because I'm Jewish. But the question is, should it matter which house of worship we neglect going to? It seems that there's a number of people who have sentenced others for whatever they want, and they have no wherewithal or even a healthy neurosis that would make them realize or wonder for even one moment that their own foundations might, in fact, be truly cracked.

Doug Brook is a technical writer in Silicon Valley whose opinions in this column represent nobody except for those who wish to discriminate against the people who discriminate against people who presume that certain other people discriminate.