I thought of many different titles for this post, but ultimately this one stuck. Don’t like it? Pfffft.
Oh, and a note here. In an effort to be honest with you and myself, I have been thinking pretty deeply about why I don’t write like I used to write.
It turns out, the more stress and /or duress I’m under in my personal and / or professional life, the less my brain works towards coming up with asinine things to pretend to be mad about or amused by or to really be mad about or amused by. (I know that sentence sucked. I have neither the time nor the inclination to fix it. Want it done better? Talk to a Lit Graduate like LAB).
Suffice it to say that all of that changed last night while accidentally watching our pathetic local news .
If you didn’t click the link or read the story, here it is in a nutshell.
The Asian community (translation: two angry Jesse Jackson-like neighborhood activists and race pimps) are upset because MARTA, our local pathetic rapid transit system, shows on its maps that the line that runs through Doraville and Chamblee is colored yellow and referred to in the recorded announcements as "The Yellow Line."
Never mind that the yellow line runs from Doraville to the airport south of town. Never mind that the yellow line runs thru the blackest of black neighborhoods in our inner-city. This is obviously a not so subtle example of MARTA officials being racist. (He says yelling unintelligibly into a megaphone with five people standing behind him with pathetically spelled, hand-scrawled signs).
Let me say this to the "activists" out there.
Settle the fuck down. Settle down and work on solving an actual problem instead of burning calories on shit like this.
"But FRT," you are saying to yourself. "This is an obvious case of racism."
Not so fast. Here’s a little history lesson.
MARTA’s rail system is horrid. We’ve laughed at it for over 30 years. It’s the most inconvenient transit system to use in the developed world. That said, it’s laughably simple. Here’s the deal.
MARTA (Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority or, as suburban folks used to call it, Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta) has a logo. And colors. They’ve been here since forever. Here it is:
You may notice that the colors in the logo are orange, yellow and blue.
When the rail system came into existence, there were two lines: yellow and blue. Yellow went north and south and blue went east to west. Orange was left out, I assume, because it was very close to orange and stupid people would get confused and / or lost.
As the system laughably "expanded", including a split on the north end and the west end, new lines were added to the map. They were green and red. Again, orange was left out to avoid confusion.
Here’s the map as it stands today.
Further, the yellow and blue lines were setup MANY years ago. I was in 6th grade or so in 1979 when they opened. In the time since then, the communities of Doraville and especially Chamblee (or as it’s referred to now: Chambodia) have become the main areas where the Asians in this area choose to live. It’s not really any different than Korea Town in LA or Little Italy in New York, except it’s just strip malls with nail salons and restaurants with signs I can’t read.
This is an example of the opposite of racism. If these folks were so offended, why didn’t they start gathering on the blue or green lines?
Further, I haven’t heard any Irish people bitching about the Green Line. And another question for me is why did the pussies at 11alive choose to post the MARTA map including ONLY the yellow line in its color and not the others?
Because that would have taken all the wind out of the reverse racists’ sails. If you watched the news and saw a map with five different colored lines, you’d call this whole story bullshit. And news people can’t fill thirty minutes with overt and obvious bullshit. Unless you’re cable news.
And another thing. It’s not like they referred to the North end of the yellow line as the slant line or the bad driver line or the good at math line. It’s a color. Shut the fuck up.
Yet another point not in your favor is WHY they use colors to mark the particular lines and routes. It wasn’t to be racist. It’s because so many people that use MARTA either can’t read English or can’t fucking read at all. Do you think if they referred to the yellow line as the Ponce De Leon line and the blue line as the Magellan line things would be better? Would the French and Spanish be offended?
My point is, it’s pathetic to think that the naming of the MARTA lines was subtly or overtly racist. Primary colors were used, much like they are in other cities around the world.
You don’t have to look too hard to find racism in Atlanta, or any city for that matter, but going to these lengths to find it indicate that these Community Organizers (rabble-rousing douchebags) just wanted an entity with a perceived fat wallet to hit.
The good news is that the group has a solution.
"Do they want MARTA to change the name and color of the line?"
Nope.
They’ve suggested a sticker. One that goes over every sticker and sign that says YELLOW. Guess what it says?
GOLD.
That’s right peeps. This horrifically painful example of gratuitous racism can be solved by calling yellow gold.
Sweet jesus.
I’ve got news for you jackasses. MARTA has no wallet. The people that run MARTA are as dumb and blind as the government, and that’s mostly because the local governments are HEAVILY involved in the operation of MARTA. They suck at what they do worse than the post office. And you "activists" are the MARTA of the Civil Rights "movement."
Sincerely,
FRT
What say you?