IRE ALERT . . .
IRE ALERT . . . SATIRE ALERT . . . SATIRE ALERT . . . SATIRE ALE
Warning for the humor-impaired and culturally insensitive: You will not "get" this next piece at all, even if you follow the link to get the whole editorial.
You have been warned.
From The Black Commentator
The Issues
"One can understand the pent-up feelings that can result from decades of repression," said Donald Rumsfeld, smiling like a serpent and still drunk from the previous day's toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad. "They're free. And free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."
At that moment, and in the sense of a "black," gallows humor to which African Americans are most receptive, Rumsfeld was howlingly, obscenely hilarious - and the distance separating him from sane humanity was never greater. If there is one social phenomenon with which African Americans have a collective body of experience, it is looting and rioting. Scarcely a decade ago, our memory-reservoirs on the subject were replenished in circles of fire spreading outward from South-Central Los Angeles. Had we known then that these acts of destruction, puny compared to the evisceration of Baghdad, were in fact behaviors of "free people [who] are free to make mistakes and do bad things," and therefore sanctioned by the ruling elite, we would have looted much further and longer and with a greater sense of righteous purpose.
Still, there is the tricky matter of timing when considering Los Angeles 1992 and Baghdad, 2003.
Rumsfeld's logic becomes a revelation. The mobs of Baghdad, each arsonist and looter, are collective victims of 35 years of oppression by Saddam's political party and personal clique. (Damn, that's not very long, from a Black perspective, but we're getting the rhythm of this reasoning.) The looters, who in their zeal have killed shop owners, medical personnel and others unwilling to contribute to the "liberation" festivities, are justified because they are happy at the political turn of events. This is a joyous riot, violence in solidarity with U.S. soldiers and Marines and their commander-in-chief. Now we understand why Rumsfeld can't keep from smiling, just thinking about all that joy.
Hundreds of years of oppression without many events to celebrate about have evidently numbed Black American sensibilities to the etiquette and proprieties of looting. Apparently, we have been engaging in the practice at the wrong time (colored people's) and for the wrong reasons, thus inviting upon our foolish heads the penalties of summary execution and long imprisonment.
Suddenly the mists part, and all becomes clear. Thanks to the revelatory logic of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer ("It's a reaction to oppression"), and Secretary of State Colin Powell ("I think it has to be understood in the context of people who have been oppressed and are reacting to their oppression"), Black Americans may now intelligently plan their next riot. It must coincide with a happy occasion. If by some miracle George Bush is defeated in November, 2004, we will wreck the joint and, this time, not a single building or institution of value will be left intact. Churches will empty immediately into the streets in righteous plunder, so uncontainable will be our joy! The sick and infirm will trash their own wheel chairs and intravenous tubes in rapturous celebration of Bush's demise. Two million inmates will burn the prisons down around themselves, forgetting to first unlock the place - Oh Happy Day! After the subways of New York have been stripped of wiring, the Black masses will gather in Harlem, where crowds will dance deliriously as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture goes up in flames, its new Malcolm X museum section reduced to ashes. Sweet victory!
We will call it the Great-Right-Time-Place-and Reason Riot. Rumsfeld, Fleischer and Powell will, of course, appreciate the logic of events as they hitchhike their ways home from burnt out Washington, D.C. They will understand the "context" of our actions, and agree that even a brief respite from nearly 400 years of oppression demands a suitable orgy of celebratory destruction.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 4/18/2003 12:40:38 PM |
