I know "Heh," and "Hee hee hee," and even "BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!" Yet none of them seems nearly loud and raucous enough to convey the joyful, condescending, spite-filled gutteral guffaws I let fly while reading this column. It begins:
Joe Cole, Correspondent
In June I visited my parents near Dallas, and my father took my two nephews and me to a Texas Rangers baseball game. The night was humid and my lower back was aching, so by the seventh inning I was ready to stand and stretch. But when the announcer declared that a choir would be singing "God Bless America" (which supplanted "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" for seventh inning stretches after 9/11), I faced a dilemma: Should I stand with my family or remain seated to protest the gratuitous patriotic cheerleading?
Ahhaahaha, haa, woo. Hee. Sheesh. Sorry. Laughed again. Oooh, what audacious activism he considered. What a heart-wrenching dilemma! Brave, and true to himself evermore. We salute thee, Mr. Cole, and your, um, brave true-to-yourselfedness. But there's more.
My aversion to patriotism began in college.
Well THERE'S a surprise! But, Mr. Cole, most people grow out of that. There's paragraphs of trivial autobiographical tripe after this that somehow manages to be simultaneously self-pitying and self-righteous, and the entire article should be ... um ... digested, for full and true enjoyment (link below). But my very favorite part is this. After explaining how he learned all about AmeriKKKA (and apparently swallowed the lessons whole without question), Mr. Cole says:
The knowledge gave me headaches that crying didn't relieve, but I kept reading. And because school, church and government had covered over all the blood and injustice with pretty patriotic myths about a Good America blessed by an ethnocentric god, my youthful disappointment and anger blazed even hotter.
Ow, ow ow! Damn, I'm laughing so hard even slapping my hand on my desk won't relieve it! Oooh, his anger blazed. Even hotter, too! Yikes!
Once when I was a graduate student in philosophy at Duke, someone on my Durham summer league softball team inquired what I was doing for Independence Day.
"Asking forgiveness for a nation built on slavery, genocide, and war," I replied.
Ah haa haa, ah haa haa, ahhhh. Ha, hee. Sigh. Unfortunately, the paragraph does not go on to say, "And then he beat me to death with his bat, chopped me into tiny self-righteous pieces, and scattered them at Wounded Knee." But we can dream. For one thing, I very much doubt Mr. Cole ever said anything of the kind. This, oddly enough, is a fabrication intended to instruct us how truly, truly good this man is; how noble, how brave, how anti-slavery, war and genocide he is (as compared to, say, you AmeriKKKA lovers who are all pro-slavery, genocide and war). But all Mr. Cole really accomplishes here is proving what an ass he is. Not only that, in the end, he's not even a brave one. But first, the casual post-softball Fourth of July conversation continues:
Our 40-something pitcher, who worked for the phone company and had taken me fishing a few times, glared at me. "If you hate America so much, why don't you just leave?"
"Because I want to watch this system burn."
OH GLORY! How rich! How utterly, utterly ridiculous! If I had to make up the dumbest, most egregiously and obviously liberal-bashing conversation to make fun of people like Mr. Cole, I confess I could not do better that he already has. So get this. You play softball with some guys, and they ask you what you're doing over the weekend, and you respond "I want to watch this system burn?" Excuse my Anglo-Saxon, but WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? Oh my Lord. Hooo! Phweee! Yahaaa!
Oh, and he never went fishing with these guys again. The BASTARDS!
Of course, in the end, and only because his back hurt, oh and also because he later had some really groovy experiences with some trees and various brownish people, he did stand up for the song. But he felt so bad about it he had to write this column and assure that he's still not "turning partiotic," whatever that means.
Good god. I wish I could write comedy.
http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/632114.html
