Sunday night I sat in sad wonder and watched exactly 6 minutes of news coverage showing Americans acting like asses in response to a death.
I had stayed with it that long because the news agency in question kept tempting me with promises to show the President's response to the death. I gave up though, I couldn't hack the typical dancing in the street fervor that looked exactly like this:
Oh no wait, wrong picture It looked like this:
You can see why I was confused right? But there's swords in the first one...
Anyway I'm Celtic and appreciate a good party at a wake and all that but even I can see that this was in pretty poor taste. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it battle etiquette to show some compassion and humility to you fallen foe? I believe the Mafia sends flowers to the families of those they whacked and keeps the partying private. And shouldn't someone have returned the body to the family? This wasn't exactly a head of state but it was America's ENEMY NUMBER ONE.
I am not however that surprised. It seems America is just itching for any excuse to party. In my own home town we had an actual PLAN OF ACTION announced 3 days running up to the big Big BIG-ASSED ALL OUT CELEBRATION OF- Cesar Chavez Day.
I kid you not. People were concerned about riots on Cesar Chavez day in my College town community. It seems Sombreros were being worn "inappropriately" -again,no joke, it was announced on the radio and written up in the College news paper. Other troublesome items of clothing were flojos, blankets and Sr. Frogs t-shirts. A collective sigh of relief went out when nothing out of the ordinary happened on March 31.
We really dodged that bullet.
And...
We are racist.
To think that people celebrating a man who organized migrant farmers could not pass up a chance to beat up a drunk person wearing an "inappropriate" Sombrero.
To be fair, they were also concerned that the holiday landed on a 5 day weekend for students. What they should have been more concerned about is the fact as a community we have robbed students of all of their traditional festival/party days by either scheduling them for when students are gone or making them disappear altogether. (the festival, not the students)
Americans, particularly working class and poverty stricken ones have no fun days. How can they really be expected to not come out for the wake of the new century and make fools of themselves when they have had civil rights stolen from them, not to mention their incomes, their dignity and actual holidays that make sense to party at. We need a reason to dance. I guess we in all our juvenile-ness got carried away. I'm not making excuses but really if we treated each other better, gave ourselves more down time we might actually grow up a tad.
Or not.
We will probably make it into a national holiday which will end up being celebrated only by college students eager to blow off steam after we take Cesar Chavez day away from them.
I had stayed with it that long because the news agency in question kept tempting me with promises to show the President's response to the death. I gave up though, I couldn't hack the typical dancing in the street fervor that looked exactly like this:
Oh no wait, wrong picture It looked like this:
You can see why I was confused right? But there's swords in the first one...
Anyway I'm Celtic and appreciate a good party at a wake and all that but even I can see that this was in pretty poor taste. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it battle etiquette to show some compassion and humility to you fallen foe? I believe the Mafia sends flowers to the families of those they whacked and keeps the partying private. And shouldn't someone have returned the body to the family? This wasn't exactly a head of state but it was America's ENEMY NUMBER ONE.
I am not however that surprised. It seems America is just itching for any excuse to party. In my own home town we had an actual PLAN OF ACTION announced 3 days running up to the big Big BIG-ASSED ALL OUT CELEBRATION OF- Cesar Chavez Day.
I kid you not. People were concerned about riots on Cesar Chavez day in my College town community. It seems Sombreros were being worn "inappropriately" -again,no joke, it was announced on the radio and written up in the College news paper. Other troublesome items of clothing were flojos, blankets and Sr. Frogs t-shirts. A collective sigh of relief went out when nothing out of the ordinary happened on March 31.
We really dodged that bullet.
And...
We are racist.
To think that people celebrating a man who organized migrant farmers could not pass up a chance to beat up a drunk person wearing an "inappropriate" Sombrero.
To be fair, they were also concerned that the holiday landed on a 5 day weekend for students. What they should have been more concerned about is the fact as a community we have robbed students of all of their traditional festival/party days by either scheduling them for when students are gone or making them disappear altogether. (the festival, not the students)
Americans, particularly working class and poverty stricken ones have no fun days. How can they really be expected to not come out for the wake of the new century and make fools of themselves when they have had civil rights stolen from them, not to mention their incomes, their dignity and actual holidays that make sense to party at. We need a reason to dance. I guess we in all our juvenile-ness got carried away. I'm not making excuses but really if we treated each other better, gave ourselves more down time we might actually grow up a tad.
Or not.
We will probably make it into a national holiday which will end up being celebrated only by college students eager to blow off steam after we take Cesar Chavez day away from them.
I, too, watched the Munchkins hanging off the fence at the White House, chanting "Ding; Dong; The Bastard's Dead!"
ReplyDeleteWe're still going to have to deal with nearly-20%-unemployment, one in four kids living below the poverty line, nearly half of America without health care, and a raft of other nonsense created (mainly) by the damned Neocons.
The whole thing did look very much like a bad frat-party, or a Middle Eastern demonstration (minus the poorly-aimed AK-47's and suchlike).
I can't - and won't - rejoice at a person's death.
Will, I can't rejoice at it either. At the very least I can feel relief. But at the moment I am concerned that people aren't taking this whole thing seriously.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, we really have no time for introspection as a people. No down time. I am beginning to feel more and more like this is contributing to our outrageous behaviour. The American "work ethic" is unhealthy and unreasonable. Part of me wonders if we relaxed and boated, fished, crocheted, partied more if we would eschew a party for a enemy combatant's death. It's not like it's the end of the war.