{"id":78,"date":"2005-04-26T10:20:02","date_gmt":"2005-04-26T14:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/04\/26\/the-smell-of-grass-and-ignorance\/"},"modified":"2005-04-26T10:20:02","modified_gmt":"2005-04-26T14:20:02","slug":"the-smell-of-grass-and-ignorance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/2005\/04\/26\/the-smell-of-grass-and-ignorance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Smell of Grass and Ignorance"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Somebody was mowing a lawn as I was walking to work this morning. I couldn’t hear it because I had my Discman on (grooving to late 70’s\/early 80’s Cars songs), but I could smell it a block away. Ah, the smell. I’ve always loved the smell of a lawn being mowed. <\/P>
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But that got me to wondering…is that smell I love so much the grass or the gas? Perhaps it’s a combination of both. How healthy is it to breathe in?<\/P>
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Oh, and in my TV addicted life I discovered a new horrible program. It’s called “Popularity Contest”. It airs on the (don’t laugh) Country Music Television channell (I said don’t laugh). Basically, they take 10 “city slickers” from the north (and the two coasts) and stick them in Vega, Texas…population 940 (ish). These 10 participants then live with a host family for 3 days and meet and greet the neighbors. After 3 days, the entire town goes to the town barn (I’m not lying) and have a popularity contest where the least popular person gets escorted out of town by the sheriff. Then, the guests get assigned to a new host family for another 3 days and then the cycle continues until there is only one person left. The most popular person is invited to live in the town.<\/P>
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This show is just wrong on so many levels. But what i find most disconcerting are the townspeople themselves. The only newspaper in the county is run by one woman….and she chooses what goes into the paper and what doesn’t. News travels fast in a small town so when one of the contestants said a swear (the BS word), it became the huge scandal in the town and this woman’s popularity dropped drastically. One woman was so offended that this swear was uttered in within 20 feet of her (but not directed at her) that she required an apology.<\/P>
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There was also this one contestant who was a psychic medium up north. He was ostracized because such a heathen existence is not consistent with Bible teachings. To make matters worse, he visited the house of this morbidly obese man (and his family) and the fat man asked the conestant what kind of car he had. He said he had a BMW and some Korean car (Kia?). Anyway, the fat guy asked if he was aware of World War II and the Korean War. The contestant said yes, but that he wasn’t alive back then. Well, the fat man got all bent out of shape because Germans and Koreans are evil and then said the man wasn’t welcomed into his house ever again. In fact, at the next popularity contest, Fat Man’s equally fat daughter got on stage (in the barn, no less) and said that the contestant was offensive in her home and should be kicked out of town.<\/P>
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I’m not lying – these people are so serious. I saw the first three episodes – and wouldn’t you know that there were only two black contestants on the show and they were the first few to get evicted. Surprise, surprise. Townsfolk were appearing on camera bitching about who they want to get out of town because they don’t “fit in”. Apparently, in Vega, TX assimilation is the good life and you’re only welcome if you’re Christian and ignorant.<\/P>
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What saddens me most is that Vega, TX is not an isolated place. Although this town was selected for this show…I know there are countless communities (even in the north) with similar attitudes. HMMM – actually, I think that scares me more than it saddens me.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Somebody was mowing a lawn as I was walking to work this morning. I couldn’t hear it because I had my Discman on (grooving to late 70’s\/early 80’s Cars songs), but I could smell it a block away. Ah, the smell. I’ve always loved the smell of a lawn being mowed. But that got me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/snarl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}