My inbox remains a reliable source of vitriolic accusations about the so-called woke mob, as well as more specific accusations that I am myself a member in good standing with the so-called woke mob, so I guess it’s time for a pertinent question:
Uh, what is it?
I’d be willing to identify as woke, but I’d have to know what it is. I’m funny that way. Absent further explanation, I’m not sure I’m woke. I’m awake, probably about half the time, but I feel like that doesn’t fulfill the requirements.
I have an almost identical issue with this term “rock,” as in “Pittsburgh’s Billy Porter rocked a bright pink Valentino at the Grammys.” OK, but what was he wearing?
The woke thing is fairly ubiquitous and has been for a few years, but its general comprehension is decidedly not. Confusion about woke reached a tipping point in the last couple weeks with yet another mindless assertion by Donald J. Trump, specifically that Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks “made a horrible mistake when he went ‘woke’ and stated, referring to the 2020 Presidential Election Scam, ‘Put that behind you, put that behind you.’”
Brooks, lest you’ve misplaced your handy roster of Jan. 6 insurrectionists, is the guy who turned up in Washington that day for conspicuous speechmaking that somehow required him to wear body armor and carry a Glock.
“Today is the day American patriots start takin’ down names and kickin’ ass,” Brooks yelled as the opening act of the Stop the Steal rally. But now that he’s put that behind him, he’s felt compelled to point out, needlessly enough, that he’s not woke.
“When the (former) president calls me ‘woke,’ there’s not anybody in Alabama with a brain larger than the size of a pea who believes that Mo Brooks is a woke liberal,” Brooks told ABC.
Same with most everyone else, pea- and non-pea brains alike, coast to coast.
Woke has evidently emerged as a kind of universal dismissal of the left, a vapid slice of political slang that has all but replaced “politically correct.” Woke is perhaps more useful because it belongs to a subset of words Trump can actually spell. Same for Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who this week tweeted: “Next year, the woke Disney lobbyists will ask Congress to extend Micky Mouse’s trademark. I think not.”
So she can spell woke, but not Mickey.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has warned that Disney will destroy the country if its “woke ideology” is left to flourish unabated. Luckily, the line to destroy the country is longer than the one for Space Mountain, and I doubt Disney will be cutting the line in front of Ron DeSantis.
This is the first reference I’ve seen to a woke ideology, even if I admit the suspicion that if anyone was about to foist some sinister agenda upon America it would be Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Laugh if you must, but I believe it was Democratic strategist James Carville who told CNN not long ago that some Democrats need to visit a “woke detox center.”
I think I saw one on Cochran Road — but try to get there on a day when the woke mob isn’t active.
Here’s another thing I’m not sure I understand. Since I’m in the media, I doubt I’d have the time for mob activities, especially since a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute says that 16% of Americans believe “the government, media, and financial institutions in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking operation.”
That sounds like a lot of work.
As it happens though, there is an official definition of woke, and it’s not surprising that it’s as benign as can be. According to Merriam-Webster, woke means aware and attentive to important facts and issues, especially issues of race and social justice. It has lyrical roots in a 1938 protest song by legendary bluesman Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly), who urged listeners to “stay woke.”
Oooh. So scary.
No one on the left should allow themselves to be defined by the pejorative slang of people who’d be hard-pressed to define such terms for themselves, and vice versa. It’s the same with the left’s “socialist” agenda. What percentage of people who throw “socialist” around can ascribe to it an accurate definition? It’s say about 16%.
Thankfully, we’re coming up on the 70th anniversary of that time Harry Truman put the “socialist” trope to bed for good.
“Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years,” Truman said in a speech at Syracuse. “Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security. Socialism is what they called farm price supports. Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.
“Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.”
And who is the “they” in all of that?
Not the woke mob.
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