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Jonah R.'s avatar

Rod, respectfully, take a deep breath, because I think you're missing the air of desperation about this, and the sense to which "there's a Pride Month angle to everything!" is already becoming a laughingstock, just eight days in.

We know how this conversation went:

"Administration says we need to provide something for Pride Month."

"But we're...Dining Services."

"Yes, so come up with some LGBT content for the daily newsletter."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Gay food stuff?"

"Like carrots and cucumbers?"

"That's not funny."

"Will people get mad that we have no trans-fats in the cafeteria?"

"That's really not funny."

"Then what the hell do you want? A profile of Paolo back there thawing pizzas in the kitchen? He's gay."

"That's it! LGBT chefs! Google says James Beard was gay."

"Was that seriously his real name?"

In the past 24 hours, the CIA put out its obligatory Pride Month social media post, which has been greeted with 100% mockery.

Have hope, Rod. This stuff is already stumbling under the weight of its own preposterousness.

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Gretchen Joanna's avatar

CHILDREN OF OUR AGE

We are children of our age,

it’s a political age.

All day long, all through the night,

all affairs—yours, ours, theirs—

are political affairs.

Whether you like it or not,

your genes have a political past,

your skin, a political cast,

your eyes, a political slant.

Whatever you say reverberates,

whatever you don’t say speaks for itself.

So either way you’re talking politics.

Even when you take to the woods,

you’re taking political steps

on political grounds.

Apolitical poems are also political,

and above us shines a moon

no longer purely lunar.

To be or not to be, that is the question.

And though it troubles the digestion

it’s a question, as always, of politics.

To acquire a political meaning

you don’t even have to be human.

Raw material will do,

or protein feed, or crude oil,

or a conference table whose shape

was quarreled over for months;

Should we arbitrate life and death

at a round table or a square one?

Meanwhile, people perished,

animals died,

houses burned,

and the fields ran wild

just as in times immemorial

and less political.

-Wislawa Szymborska (1923 – 2012)

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