Big Mike: A Shot At The Dark

I was going to explain my decision to quit Facebook today. I haven’t been on the damned thing in more than two weeks. I have my reasons but you’re going to have to wait now.

Quickly checking my email before I began to clack away, I noticed a message from The Loved One. The topic line read: “I’m so angry….”. Oh hell, I thought, what’d I do wrong now?

Take Cover!

She’s a great looking tomato, smart and sweet. But when she gets mad, Monroe County’s emergency sirens ought to blow. Her message continued: “…Your blog topic should be on this!” Phew! It wasn’t me she was mad at. That’s a relief.

The Loved One went on to provide a link to a news story about yesterday’s demonstrations in Washington DC against health care reform. Funny thing is, I’d been thinking of writing about them myself but then decided to go with Facebook. The Loved One’s email put me back on my original track. Thanks, babe-elah!

So, the righteous white people of this holy land descended upon our nation’s capital to voice their extreme displeasure with that unmistakable sign of fascist tyranny, universal health care. Many of yesterday’s demonstrators described themselves as Tea Partiers or Tea Baggers or what the hell ever they’re calling themselves. Coffee Urns, I don’t know. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t care. Only this gang promises to be something more than an annoying collection of uninformed, semi-literate jerks. We’ve had plenty of those and we’ve survived just fine, thank you.

As congressmen climbed the Capitol steps, headed for a vote, demonstrators called Barney Frank a faggot and a homo. They spat on Emanuel Cleaver. They called Cleaver, Andre Carson and John  Lewis nigger. Again and again and again. They shouted the mantra, “Kill the bill,” emphasis on the word kill. These people were, I remind you, righteous whites claiming to represent the majority in this holy land.

The Spitting And Slurring Field

The mainstream media, naturally, is tut-tutting the whole thing. This kind of behavior, they say, just won’t do. Of course, it’s nothing compared to Tiger Woods cheating on his wife or Kate Gosselin getting an ugly new hairstyle. Those are outrages! But this fag/nigger/spitting business, well, it’s not very cricket, is it?

Somehow, though, the news anchors wearing handsome suits and contrived appropriate looks on their faces didn’t mention the most chilling of the un-cricket exhibitions yesterday. Signs like these went pretty much ignored by television reporters, wags, and wits:

If Spit And Slurs Can’t Stop Obama, Maybe Armed Warfare Can

I can’t quite figure out why this kind of messaging isn’t scaring the poo out of us. Maybe it’s so jarring that we want to pretend it doesn’t even exist. Maybe, on the other hand, it’s just a journalistic decision — some producer says, Aw, we’re not gonna worry about those signs, it’s just a few wackos in the crowd, let’s not tar the whole bunch of them.

Neither option makes me feel quite comfortable with the judgments of mainstream media news decision-makers. Then again, anybody who has ever felt comfortable with the calls of those lunkheads needs a long vacation.

A third option comes to mind and it makes me want to retch. TV newscasts might have soft-pedaled these signs because, well, they just didn’t want to insult or alienate the rabid anti-Obama-ites of this holy land. The producers are afraid the Tea Baggers or Mr. Coffees or what the hell ever they are will howl that the commie media is trying to portray them as loons. We’re just good, solid Americans trying to have our voice heard, they might complain, and if we have to call a few congressmen fags and niggers and maybe spit on one or two of ‘em, we’ve got the right.

If we’re worried about the fragile sensitivities of people who dress up as Betsy Ross and Sam Adams and think a brown President and a gay congressman equal Nazi Germany, then we’re fucked, folks.

More than a few of yesterday’s Tea Partiers or Prune Juice Drinkers or whatever agree with the sentiments displayed on the above sign. Their rage is going to turn into something uglier than it already is. Someone’s gonna take a shot at somebody sooner rather than later.

I’m not saying the news departments of NBC, CBS, and ABC would stop it from happening. Only that they should remind us it’s right around the corner.

Oswald’s Window