September 2006
The September incarnation of Rant Rhapsody brought some new folks to the stage, as well as some familiar faces. It was, as uaual, funny, sexy, irreverent, poignant, sentimental, silly and infuriating. Matty Vaz reprised for us, as did Jason-Flores Williams. New faces were Marika Josephson, Savitri Durkee, and, of Course, Reverend Billy. Here is what they read. OUT LOUD.
REVEREND BILLY
"Friends"
FRIENDS
At the time of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, I went through a time of death. Friends, and friends of friends, were passing away. People in their 20’s and 30’s or their 90’s. Lots of other friends were in prison, jailed by Republican-led police who couldn’t read, or wouldn’t read, the Constitution. So we were embarking on a time of slow motion lawsuits and hushed memorials.
*****
Every day that week of the RNC -- I tried to take a long bike ride through the park near my home, before going into Manhattan for the puppetry and chanting and die-ins and re-enactments of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and performances of long unemployment lines – Peace work. On one of those days, I was peddling through the park and saw that the gate to the Quaker cemetery was left open. Someone was working on the grounds. I had never seen the gate to the war resisters’ remains open like this.
I walked in. I found the caretaker down in one of the centuries-old groups of bodies, below the gate in a dark swale. The trees here are primeval. It is said that this is the original forest, never logged, one of the few in New York City. The white oaks with their great operatic branches go up and up. I got the generous hand-wave yes -- I could walk around, and I wheeled my bike up toward higher forests and meadows filled with sunlight.
At the fork in the road, where it divided to go in a circle around the forest and around the graves, I stopped again. Tiered back into the hill, were many dead, whose presence was now becoming the fact of my visit, that unmistakable ruling stillness. Then I noticed a sign, about as tall as me, really a thick totem-pole kind of thing, painted white. Vertical black letters made words down the sides of the pole, and I saw that on the faceted surface of this pole, as I walked around it, were messages in English, French, German, Chinese, Spanish, Hebrew, Indian and Russian.
a
“Let Peace Prevail on the Earth.” That is what it said, with the “Let” on the high end and the “Earth” down near the grass. Then I looked up the hill at the graves, the separate small cemeteries from different Friends’ meetings in the city, and from different times in history. Hundreds of them up there, old bodies and child’s bodies. I became aware of my status in my upright body, steadying my bike with one living hand, this extraordinary living body loaned to me by some mysterious source.
These people under the grass of this beautiful hill had worked for Peace. They are Friends. They are Quakers. This pole with the eight hopeful prayers came from the authority of all that work. I could feel the hope for Peace down in the minutes of their lives, in each heartbeat, now steadied in the larger heartbeat of this lovely park. The eight Peace prayers kept repeating as I walked by the names and the years and days.
Then a new feeling swept through me from all this, an unmistakable feeling that would, I sensed this right away – that this would always be there for me to remember. All the deaths around my community and family in recent weeks had somehow conspired to give the feeling of something terribly wrong in the world. From the Sudan and Chechnya to my neighbors and friends -- it all felt that way. And the hopelessness was not exactly the worst of it. There was something darker than your usual hopelessness. There was the feeling that life actively did not make sense - not so much the absence of hope but the presence of good peoples’ deaths in a pattern of directed confusion. We were being beaten by life, surrounded by a re-awakened death, a death that didn’t fit at the end of the life. These last weeks I’d felt the presence of the demons I never believed in.
But the feeling I had that day - there at the strange language pole on the road through the graves – came from this phrase that these people had agreed to repeat as one by one they passed into the hill. Let Peace Prevail on the Earth. The dead Friends were saying this to me in unison. The leafy shadows and pops of sunlight moved back and forth across the gravestones. I could hear them talking, looking up from all their work. Let Peace Prevail on the Earth.
It was one of those thoughts that had been waiting a long time. It came through me like a physical aftermath. The peace message is spoken by the dead here and also by the living who painted the pole and know that they will go into the earth here soon. They both speak “Let Peace Prevail…” at the same time. It’s an intra-life chorus. The faith is: when you live your life making more life, then death fits into it, because life wasn’t cheated by premature bullets or bombs. The Peaceful dead have their fully wrought lives continuing in the world, as they rest. They have sent life out beyond themselves and the living are reading this script too, the words looping in and out of the ground.
We can leave this simple wish up in the sun for the living to understand while they pass by. I will say this too.
MATTY VAZ:
"Lou Dobbs Ain’t No Damn Indian"
“At the bridge today,” explains a man waiting for the R train at 36th street in Sunset Park, on April 1st. “I been here eleven years. Luchando cada dia. Perro hoy, vamos a celebrar. It’s a day to show pride. To let people know we live here. We work here. No somos criminales. Somos obreros, and we love New York City. We love Mexico too. That’s why we got the flags,” he explains as he points to his two friends, who are both holding flags of red, green, and white. “My name? Emiliano. Emiliano Z., from Morelos Mexico, home of the revolution.”
At the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge tens of thousands have gathered on a cold and rainy day to put together New York City’s first show of strength in the political and social debate over the fate of the many millions of immigrants who are currently in the United States without the official sanction of the government. But in downtown Brooklyn there is no debate at all. There is only agreement. An agreenment that HR 447 must go. The controversial bill, constructed by congressmen Jim Sensenbrenner, which seeks to make felons of all undocumented immigrants, has woken up the political force of latinos around the nation, and has reminded New York City, that the town most closely associated with immigration cannot sit on the sidelines at this important moment. That is why so many flags are waving and so many people are chanting “Si Se Puede!”
A human stream spans the length of the bridge as people march, chant, and wave to the cars that are backed up on the exit ramps. The Brooklyn bound drivers honk their horns in solidarity with those on their feet. A woman takes the blue and white flag of Barbados off the headrest of her car seat, and waves it out the window. “Somebody shoulda call me,” she shouts. “Why nuhbody didn’t call me. If you havin’ rally, next time, call me up,” she says as she honks her horn. The marchers wave and blow their whistles in response and then continue across the bridge. On the Manhattan side, the crowd is blessed by Reverendo Rueben Diaz, and everyone agrees to meet up once again on April 10th, at city hall.
On the 10th of April, at the 36th street train station in Sunset Park, a transit worker, Ernestine Woods, explains that there is an immigrant on trial at the State Supreme Court building in Downtown Brooklyn. “They prolly gone give ‘im twenty five to life. ‘Cause that’s how they do,” She explains as she hoists a garbage bag out of a garbage can and begins to tie it up. “That’s how they do. Lock you up an’ throw away the key. They maybe don’t even have no key.”
Ms. Woods proves correct, in that there is indeed an immigrant on trial. On the seventh floor of the State Supreme Court building, a man from Trinidad, by the name of Roger T., stands in front of Judge Theodore Jones, inside of a packed courtroom. The front row and the jury box are filled with dozens of journalists, all of them white, except for Ray Sanchez of New York Newsday. The back rows are filled with transit workers, most of them black, many of them grandmothers. The lawyer representing the Attorney General of the State of New York, a towering man, stands and explains why we are all gathered together. “We are here because at approximately 3am on December 20th, Mr. Roger Toussaint announced a system wide strike. When asked about the legality of that strike, he said only, ‘There is the law and there is justice.’” The judge hands down a ten-day sentence for the man from Trinidad, and the courtroom empties out.
The many workers who had filled the back of the courtroom, now fill an entire car on a Manhattan bound R train. Two female passengers riding the train look on in shock and confusion, as the sight of TWU Local 100 colors leave them wondering if the strike is on again. “Don’t worry darlin’. We just goin’ to the immigration rally,” explains a female transit worker, carrying a sign that says “We Are All Immigrants.” At City Hall the group climbs the steps to join the crowd that has gathered together to inform the government of their intentions.
Flags are waving everywhere. Ecuador, Mexico Haiti, Peru, Guyana, Panama, Puerto Rico, Pakistan, Russia, Honduras, El Salvador, Ireland, China, and countless other nations are all represented. The crowd shouts, “Si Se Puede!” and “Un Pueblo Unido, Jamas Sera Vencido!” Many famous politicians have already spoken and gone home for the day. Yet the crowd continues to grow. Large television screens and banks of speakers have been set up every few blocks so that the crowd can see and hear whoever is at the podium. The speakers at the podium express pride and call out to the various nations on hand.
“This is beautiful. You can only love this,” explains David Abney, a 63 year old guidance counselor from Crown Heights Brooklyn. “All these people. It’s a beautiful thing. They parta this country, jus’ like Goerge Bush is. I was born here. But I’m glad to see these folks. Happy they could join us. And man, that borders wide-open baby. People runnin’ for they lives. And I’m happy to see ‘em when they get here. We gotta get ‘em some rights now. But see, a lotta people don’t want that. They want business as usual. Jus’ happy makin’ money. They rely on indentured servitude. But we lookin’ to change all that. We out here for total amnesty. See, you gotta know your history brother man. This country is based on total amnesty. You got Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. They started a war in the name of slavery, and half a million people got killed. And you see what they got. They didn’t spend one day in jail. They got total amnesty. So we out here in the American tradition. Total Amnesty.”
Signs with political messages are spread around, interspersed among the flags and the faces of the young and old. “This is a family day,” explains Carmita Oquendo from Ecuador. “Everybody is out here in peace. Look, there’s more babies than grown ups. There’s whole entire families. I’m here with my mother, my father, my bother, my sister, my nephew, and my niece,” she explains as she points to her brother who is wearing a shirt that says “End Deportation Now,” and her nephew who is a baby in a stroller, waving a Jesus flag.
“Kyan’t deport peace an’ love,” explains a man with a Jamaican flag draped over his back. “Kyan’t deport love. Y’undastan’ bruddah? Kyan’t deport love. All de people yuh see here. Dem ‘ave only love. Look on de news bruddah. Is hijackin’an’ kidnappin’ all ovah de eart’. Is war everywhere. But de people on de street today. Dem don’ ‘ave not one tank an’ gun. Yuh see dem bruddah? Dem don’ ‘ave not one tank an’ gun. Dem ‘ave only one love. My name? Mista Brown. Mista Dennis Brown, livin’ in Flatbush Brooklyn.”
Mr. Muaad Al-Hamza from Yemen has been here for three years. “I am living in one-furty-five streed. I wurdk in store,” he explains. “Evryday is haad wurdk. Evrybuddy wunt to play mega-meellion. Bacon, egg and cheese. Shouting and screaming. Is haad wurdk. But this is my home. In one-furty-five streed. Muaad from Yemen.”
Bobby McCoy is a union electrician, who arrived in New York from Ireland six years ago. “Legalize the Irish. That’s what I’m tellin’ ya. Hell legalize everything green. Bush seen how hard we work. How hard all the immigrants work. Legalize everybody,” he shouts as he is swept along with the crowd.
A man with a Puerto Rican flag wrapped around one wrist and a Dominican flag wrapped around the other, stands on a manhole cover, as the crowd streams past him on all sides. “Nah. I ain’t movin’ papa. I was born right here. They givin’ electric shocks in New York City. On the manhole covers son. You step on a manhole cover and catch a shock, then Bloomberg gives you a million dollars. It was in the Post. He gives you a million cash. He keeps it right in his pocket. That’s why I’m not movin’. Even when this is over. I’ll be right here, cars swervin’ around me. I’m not movin. Yo look at that bullshit,” he says as he gestures to one of the large screens, which is flashing the number 125,000. “You gotta be kiddin’ me. Its way more people than that out here. Cops hasslin’ people everywhere. Half these Mexicans just waved they flag then turned around and went home. Who gave ‘em that number? Pataki? They brought Giulianni back so he could count people? They got that number from the New York Post. That’s why we gotta boycott the Post. They stay lyin’ all day and all night. Its no less than less than five million people out here right now. Maybe ten million. Somewhere between five and ten million people. No question papa. See everybody just does what Bloomberg says. Bloomberg says its only eleven people out here, then its only eleven people out here. Bloomberg says George Steinbrenner needs to use your livin’ room, then you just go outside an’ wait ‘till he’s done. C’mon man. No. I’m not movin’ from this manhole cover. I’m tellin’ you that right now. Uh oh. Look at this guy. They brought this guy out here now,” he says, as he gestures to the screen once again. “Nobody move, nobody gets hurt.”
Featured on the giant screen was the man from Trinidad, who had recently arrived from downtown Brooklyn. “I just came from the State Supreme Court,” he explains. “They say I’m a criminal, and the leader of 35,000 criminals. I am to go to jail….There is something wrong with this country when 11 and a half million people are called criminals just for trying to do an honest days work and take care of their families in the richest country in the world…..Everybody here today should think long and hard about what is happening here in America. We have a government that creates immigrants by the millions, and then mistreats them when they get here. If you have tyranny and oppression and famine and poverty around the world, you are going to have immigrants coming to the US. No wall is going to stop them. No fence with barbed wire on the Mexican border or frozen moat on the Canadian border. It will just make it easier to arrest and brutalize them. We don’t need a wall. We need a new foreign policy so people can make a decent living and live in peace in their home countries…. If we are all criminals, America needs a new set of laws. That’s why we say, NO JUSTICE! NO PEACE! Say it with me. NO JUSTICE! NO PEACE!”
“You know what’s gonna happen to that guy right,” said manhole cover man. “See, he told Pataki to go fuck himself. Now he’s out here shoutin’ with all these Mexicans. Man, he’s gonna be in Guantanamo Bay. That’s where he’s headed. Guantanamo Bay. I’m not playin’ wit’ chu papa. For real. And I ain’t movin’ from this spot for nobody. That’s between me an’ Bloomberg. I want total amnesty. Total amnesty for all these people out here. Bush and them clowns started a war, and killed all those people, and they got amnesty. They shoulda got the electric chair. But they got amnesty. They said they did it so the Iraqis could vote. Guess what. These people right here wanna vote too. But chu don’t need no goddamned war about it. We want amnesty like Bush and them got. But man, you got this guy on TV everynight. The fat guy on CNN cryin’ about immigration. Yeah, Lou Dobbs. Exactly. Yo this guy, maaan. He’s too much. Let him mow his own motherfuckin’ lawn. You know what I’m sayin’. Let him deliver Chinese food on a bicycle. Ridin’ around Brooklyn an’ shit. Gettin’ robbed for tips in the stairwell. Fat bastard. Lou Dobbs ain’t no damn Indian. Everyday on TV shoutin’ call the police. Stop cryin’ arready man. Damn! You could write that down. You could tell ‘im I said that. He could look me up in the phone book. My last name is Perez. If its more than one Perez in the phone book, I’m the one that’s in the Bronx,” he concludes as he remains planted on the manhole cover, while the crowd continues to flood past him
Pablo Picatto, an immigrant from Mexico, is a professor of Latin American History at Columbia University. “We are seeing something very important,” he explains, as he looks at all of the faces around him. “People are asserting themselves. They realize this situation of having no rights cannot go on indefinitely. People are realizing this on a massive scale. And we are witnessing something that goes beyond this day. Something that goes beyond this year. Something historic.”
Perhaps he is right. After all, we got Emiliano Z. from Morelos Mexico out here. And we got Roger T. from Trinidad who announced a system wide strike at 3am on December 20th. And we got Ecuador, Mexico Haiti, Peru, Guyana, Panama, Puerto Rico, Pakistan, Russia, Honduras, El Salvador, Ireland, China, countless other nations, and evryday is haad wurdk. They givin’ electric shocks in New York City, and its five to ten million people out here, an’ dem don’ ‘ave not one tank an’ gun. The border’s wide-open baby, and people runnin’ for they lives. Bring your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, your nephew, your niece. Don’t worry about Lou Dobbs. He ain’t no damn Indian. He sees the baby with the Jesus flag, and he shouts call the police. He needs to learn the words. Si Se Puede! Total Amnesty New York City! One Love! No Justice, No Peace!
SAVITRI DURKEE:
Short Lila- a rant
I was at a big store buying underwear. They were of different colors and patterns and happened to be on sale. I was broke, but not too broke to buy four pairs of silk underwear for no other reason than they happened to be on sale. I could buy things, I just didn’t have any cash. The line was very long, I stood behind eight other people, three of whom had carts and coupons. I estimated I would be there for at least twenty minutes. I eavesdropped.
A man said,
Oh he knew what he was doing allright
and a woman said
well he’s never exactly been in his right mind.
and the man said
you say that whenever someone does something stupid.
and she said
well it’s the truth.
And he said
No it ain’t. it aint the truth, he’s in his right mind allright, he
just plays dumb so nobody’ll blame him for anything.
and she said
I ain’t saying he’s not to blame, I’m saying he’s never been, as
far as I can tell, in his right mind.
And the man, loudly,
Oh bullshit Pauline.
and they were quiet.
I had been up to that point, on the man’s side, the man talking. The woman had a weak voice and seemed untrustworthy. They were joined by a fat young boy in a monster truck t shirt.
Mom, he said, gimme fity cent so I can get me a soda. She gave him fifty cents and a minute later he returned from the machine to stand beside her.
Mom, he said, you think I could get one of them hats? He pointed at a shelf stocked with blaze orange hunting hats in all different styles.
Which one she said
I don’t know, he said. He walked over to the shelf.
He started trying them on. His hair was black. He checked them all in the mirror, one after another. As far as I could tell they all looked about the same.
What kind does Jimmy have? his mother said, and the man, who
had been silent for a while said, Who the hell cares what kind of hat Jimmy has?
Well I was just wanting to know, she said,
Jimmys’ like this, the boy said, holding up a mesh baseball cap with a long brim, but I don’t like it, he said, and I don’t like
Jimmy much neither.
Boy, don’t you get smart with your mother, the man said. You watch yourself, he said, I’ll whup you.
You get whichever one you want, the mom said and the father said, no, he ain’t getting one. Boy you go on outside that door before you spend all my money. he said
But they’re only two dollars, the boys said,with a little whine in his voice
and his father yelled, loud, so everyone stared, Boy, I told you, get the hell outside the door and quit running your mouth.
Ahead of them a lady holding some lottery tickets winced and smiled at the boy sympathetically. The line inched forward and the couple was silent behind me. I wondered how they met. The man walked away from the woman towards a tower of reading glasses. He was lean and his skin was blasted white. He tried on glasses in much the same way his son had
tried on the hats, stooping and glancing at each pair in the mirror, taking them off and then cramming them carelessly back on the rack.
Why you trying those on, the woman asked
Because.
He put on a pair of very thick magnifying glasses and looked right at me, his pupils enlarged to the size of poker chips. He glared , I was frightened and looked away. He came back and handed the chosen pair to his wife.
Why you getting those, she asked again
Because, he said, I’m old and I can’t see.
Oh. said his wife.
Suddenly it became clear that the boy, their boy, was fighting
with three girls on the sidewalk outside. Their shouts weren’t loud enough to hear through the glasss but when the man opened the door the words yo, fat and ass hammered through. The man grabbed his son by the arm and dragged him off down the street..
I felt funny. And I guessed I didn’t need those panties at all., what I needed, I realized, was to get away from there. I abandoned my purchase on a mountain of discount candies and ran out the door. I turned down the alley toward my car and saw the man and his son in front of a truck down the block. The father was hitting the boy in the face . The son was already crying and exhausted, his arms rising to his face for protection a little to late, a little too low. He was programmed to lose. I screamed really loud and threw myself across the hood of a car. The metal was hot in the sun.Perfect for a cat, I thought. Then it was like someone shook me awake. I opened my eyes. The man and his son were gone, their truck was gone, the whole street looked empty. Everything had changed.
I went back to the store and recovered my panties from the mound of candy and dried up chocolate. I got in the line , and considered the man in front of me. He was buying plastic flowers and a gold framed print of a cheetah, he had sneakers on and his pants did not fit very well, the cashier rang up his order and he handed her a credit card just like mine.
Flag- a rhapsody
There was a day in the seventh grade, when I still had perfect marks and got selected for extra activities like door decoration and flag duty and that day I asked if Jason Ivey could come with me to take it down because the kid who usually did it with me was home sick and I couldn’t fold the flag alone and the teacher said okay fineyou have 23 minutes exactly.
It was autumn, October, the trees were changing color and the fields had started to harden and gray, Jason and I hid behind a rust colored van and smoked stolen pot out of a small wooden pipe. A few fields away we could see the school busses lining up at the elementary school. We were talking about the Russians. It would be a day like this. He said. With little clouds and a dangerous blue sky, I said, They will choose a great day to destroy us, I said don’t you think? We we weren’t scared though, not at all, we were laughing. By then we only had 12 minutes to get the flag, fold it and be back in class so we ran to the pole, and started taking it down. We weren’t paying attention, or were hurrying to much and we tangled the rope badly, and then we just kept making the knot worse, I could hear the blood in my ears, and fingers felt rubbery and time got all slippery. Jason found a piece of metal and wedged it in the knot and we finally got it open and the flag slid down on the rope and then we had that big flag in our arms like a quilt and I told Jason maybe I didn’t think it would be on a day like this , if we were going to have that war we already would have, or even maybe we have already had, I mean other than the time we already did ---why are you saying “we” he asked me---why do you keep saying we?
And then everyone started pouring out of our school, in tidy little rows, and they came out of the elementary school too, everyone, dozens of little lines if people pouring out, like worms escaping an apple and Jason and I shook our heads in disbelief- “I knew it, he said, I knew it and I felt a pit in my stomach opening like thunder and we dropped that flag and started running, straight at the school as fast as we could, until I saw our teacher waving at us, with both arms, like he was directing a plane---and I grabbed Jason’s arm and steered him away toward the soccer fields and we ran and ran until we were just into the woods on the far side of the goal and only then did we dare look back – and everyone was just going back inside, the buildings were still there and the sky was still blue and the little kids were piling on the busses and jason started laughing and said, “it’s a fire drill.” And my eyes fell on a deer, standing motionless in the trees, 50 yards in front of me, looking back at me. I grabbed Jason’s arm, but he was still laughing and didn’t see her, we turned and started the long walk back across the fields toward the pole and the great big flag in a little heap beneath the rope.
MARIKA JOSEPHSON:
A Memo from Rummy
by Marika Josephson
September 1, 2006
From: Donald Rumsfeld Office of the Secretary of Defense To: Democrats
RE: My Job Performance
Dear Democrats,
My word, you’d think the sky was falling and the world was about to collapse with the way that all of you have been complaining recently. All I hear these days is “Rumsfeld is incompetent for this,” and “Fire Rumsfeld for doing that.” My goodness, I’ve never seen people get into such a tizzy over a job! I know that most of you Nazi-loving ex-hippie, ex-flower children haven’t spent much time thinking about the strategies of war, so let me try to highlight our main defense mechanisms in words that even you can understand. That way you’ll all know how complicated the work is over here in Defense and you can all quit your bellyaching.
1. Things Explode
So you’re worried about body armor, are you? Well let me tell you something: When you’re at war, things explode. That’s just the way it is. We put large bombs on airplanes, the airplanes drop the bombs on the ground, and the bombs break open into gigantic fireballs that throw pieces of building and earth everywhere. You think body armor is going to save you from that? Of course people are going to get hurt—don’t you think that some people probably pulled a hangnail when we dropped the bombs over Hiroshima? But let’s remember that Iraqis can pick up and leave Iraq any time they want—nobody’s forcing them to stay in a country filled with militant Islamo-fascists. So if some “innocent” people are killed, they’re not completely innocent if they refuse to leave their godless, warring nation, are they? Remember, the death of inno_cents_ is not the same as the death of innocence. If Iraqis die—hey, dying happens. We had to break some eggs to get rid of the Nazis during World War II, didn’t we?
2. You’re Not Allowed to Know Everything
Secondly, you’re not allowed to know everything—it’s called national security. Let’s not get our panties in a twist over this domestic spying program. Come on, do you really think anyone cares about your pointless conversations about your Nana’s recipe for blueberry pie, or the best way to whittle balsa wood? Get real. And if you are a terrorist, of course we’re listening—we always have been. But we can’t just tap you on the shoulder to make sure you know you’re being monitored all the time. I mean, do you think that we told Hitler we were listening to his conversations with Eichmann? “Oh, excuse me Hitler, I just want to let you know that the American government is listening in on this conversation about wiping out an entire race of people by loading them onto cattle cars and throwing them into death camps.” I don’t think so.
But look, we’re all realists here—if you just can’t get over this whole phone-monitoring thing there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. First of all, I’d just stop talking about the President, or about things you’d like to do to Dick Cheney in general, period. Stop saying words like “U.S. government,” or “bomb,” or “Sometimes I wonder about Islam.” And furthermore, I’d stop mentioning famous landmarks, places where security looks lax, empty warehouses, airplanes, boats, buses, long tunnels, subway stations, bridges you have to cross everyday on your commute to work—you get the picture. If you want to keep talking about that stuff, look, you’re fair game, that’s all I’m saying. You might as well just admit right now that you’ve memorized Mein Kampf and walk around with a little moustache under your nose and your arm permanently raised toward your great fascist forefathers. You’re going to be labeled a “known phone,” as we say over here, no longer a “phone unknown.”
3. Terrorists are Terrible and Diplomats are Diplomatic
Which brings me to my next point. I know that most of you don’t have to worry about this on a daily basis, working at your yoga centers and health food stores, but those of us who work in Defense have to watch out for terrorists, okay? That’s our job. Day in and day out. And it’s not easy—do you want to know why? Terrorists are not sympathetic, they’re not funny, they’re not adorable, they’re terrible. That’s why they’re called terrorists. Terr-i-ble. If they were pacifists, they’d be peaceful—they’d believe in pacifism. If they were herbalists—you all should know this one—they’d believe in herbalism. (And herbalists plant a lot of things, but they don’t plant bombs on airplanes.) But they’re terrorists, so take a wild guess—what do they believe in? That’s right, terrorism.
Now, this seems like as good time as any to address the little tiff over the photo of myself shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein. I know this is going to be shocking to you all, but, what did you expect me to do? Of course I shook his hand—I was a diplomat. And, follow along with me people, what do diplomats do? You got it—they’re diplomatic. But beyond diplomacy, you know what? I don’t have any control over what Saddam Hussein does. Saddam Hussein is going to do what Saddam Hussein is going to do. Doing happens. I mean, we had to fire on the Axis soldiers to invade Normandy, right? Are you saying that we never should have invaded Normandy? Should we just pretend that all of Nazi Germany never happened?
4. Time is Long
And lastly, I want to say that war takes time, and time is long. Goodness me, it’s not like you can just fight a war in the time it takes to make a bag of microwave popcorn. Of course we may have initially underestimated the number of troops we needed by a few thousand, but as I’ve said above, terrorists are terrible, things explode, and doing happens. I don’t expect you to understand all the details since you’re not allowed to know everything, anyway. So let’s just calm down here, folks, we have plenty of people in our military to go around. Around and around. Fighting for the long lengths of time. I really can’t explain any more than that to you people if you can’t get your wheatgrass-drinking heads around it. So let’s just take a deep breath and count to ten before making any more outrageous assertions about my job next time—that way it will be more obvious to everyone who’s who, and what’s what, and just who sanctioned the gas chambers at Auschwitz anyway.
In faithful service,
Donald Rumsfeld
REVEREND BILLY
"Friends"
FRIENDS
At the time of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, I went through a time of death. Friends, and friends of friends, were passing away. People in their 20’s and 30’s or their 90’s. Lots of other friends were in prison, jailed by Republican-led police who couldn’t read, or wouldn’t read, the Constitution. So we were embarking on a time of slow motion lawsuits and hushed memorials.
*****
Every day that week of the RNC -- I tried to take a long bike ride through the park near my home, before going into Manhattan for the puppetry and chanting and die-ins and re-enactments of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and performances of long unemployment lines – Peace work. On one of those days, I was peddling through the park and saw that the gate to the Quaker cemetery was left open. Someone was working on the grounds. I had never seen the gate to the war resisters’ remains open like this.
I walked in. I found the caretaker down in one of the centuries-old groups of bodies, below the gate in a dark swale. The trees here are primeval. It is said that this is the original forest, never logged, one of the few in New York City. The white oaks with their great operatic branches go up and up. I got the generous hand-wave yes -- I could walk around, and I wheeled my bike up toward higher forests and meadows filled with sunlight.
At the fork in the road, where it divided to go in a circle around the forest and around the graves, I stopped again. Tiered back into the hill, were many dead, whose presence was now becoming the fact of my visit, that unmistakable ruling stillness. Then I noticed a sign, about as tall as me, really a thick totem-pole kind of thing, painted white. Vertical black letters made words down the sides of the pole, and I saw that on the faceted surface of this pole, as I walked around it, were messages in English, French, German, Chinese, Spanish, Hebrew, Indian and Russian.
a
“Let Peace Prevail on the Earth.” That is what it said, with the “Let” on the high end and the “Earth” down near the grass. Then I looked up the hill at the graves, the separate small cemeteries from different Friends’ meetings in the city, and from different times in history. Hundreds of them up there, old bodies and child’s bodies. I became aware of my status in my upright body, steadying my bike with one living hand, this extraordinary living body loaned to me by some mysterious source.
These people under the grass of this beautiful hill had worked for Peace. They are Friends. They are Quakers. This pole with the eight hopeful prayers came from the authority of all that work. I could feel the hope for Peace down in the minutes of their lives, in each heartbeat, now steadied in the larger heartbeat of this lovely park. The eight Peace prayers kept repeating as I walked by the names and the years and days.
Then a new feeling swept through me from all this, an unmistakable feeling that would, I sensed this right away – that this would always be there for me to remember. All the deaths around my community and family in recent weeks had somehow conspired to give the feeling of something terribly wrong in the world. From the Sudan and Chechnya to my neighbors and friends -- it all felt that way. And the hopelessness was not exactly the worst of it. There was something darker than your usual hopelessness. There was the feeling that life actively did not make sense - not so much the absence of hope but the presence of good peoples’ deaths in a pattern of directed confusion. We were being beaten by life, surrounded by a re-awakened death, a death that didn’t fit at the end of the life. These last weeks I’d felt the presence of the demons I never believed in.
But the feeling I had that day - there at the strange language pole on the road through the graves – came from this phrase that these people had agreed to repeat as one by one they passed into the hill. Let Peace Prevail on the Earth. The dead Friends were saying this to me in unison. The leafy shadows and pops of sunlight moved back and forth across the gravestones. I could hear them talking, looking up from all their work. Let Peace Prevail on the Earth.
It was one of those thoughts that had been waiting a long time. It came through me like a physical aftermath. The peace message is spoken by the dead here and also by the living who painted the pole and know that they will go into the earth here soon. They both speak “Let Peace Prevail…” at the same time. It’s an intra-life chorus. The faith is: when you live your life making more life, then death fits into it, because life wasn’t cheated by premature bullets or bombs. The Peaceful dead have their fully wrought lives continuing in the world, as they rest. They have sent life out beyond themselves and the living are reading this script too, the words looping in and out of the ground.
We can leave this simple wish up in the sun for the living to understand while they pass by. I will say this too.
MATTY VAZ:
"Lou Dobbs Ain’t No Damn Indian"
“At the bridge today,” explains a man waiting for the R train at 36th street in Sunset Park, on April 1st. “I been here eleven years. Luchando cada dia. Perro hoy, vamos a celebrar. It’s a day to show pride. To let people know we live here. We work here. No somos criminales. Somos obreros, and we love New York City. We love Mexico too. That’s why we got the flags,” he explains as he points to his two friends, who are both holding flags of red, green, and white. “My name? Emiliano. Emiliano Z., from Morelos Mexico, home of the revolution.”
At the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge tens of thousands have gathered on a cold and rainy day to put together New York City’s first show of strength in the political and social debate over the fate of the many millions of immigrants who are currently in the United States without the official sanction of the government. But in downtown Brooklyn there is no debate at all. There is only agreement. An agreenment that HR 447 must go. The controversial bill, constructed by congressmen Jim Sensenbrenner, which seeks to make felons of all undocumented immigrants, has woken up the political force of latinos around the nation, and has reminded New York City, that the town most closely associated with immigration cannot sit on the sidelines at this important moment. That is why so many flags are waving and so many people are chanting “Si Se Puede!”
A human stream spans the length of the bridge as people march, chant, and wave to the cars that are backed up on the exit ramps. The Brooklyn bound drivers honk their horns in solidarity with those on their feet. A woman takes the blue and white flag of Barbados off the headrest of her car seat, and waves it out the window. “Somebody shoulda call me,” she shouts. “Why nuhbody didn’t call me. If you havin’ rally, next time, call me up,” she says as she honks her horn. The marchers wave and blow their whistles in response and then continue across the bridge. On the Manhattan side, the crowd is blessed by Reverendo Rueben Diaz, and everyone agrees to meet up once again on April 10th, at city hall.
On the 10th of April, at the 36th street train station in Sunset Park, a transit worker, Ernestine Woods, explains that there is an immigrant on trial at the State Supreme Court building in Downtown Brooklyn. “They prolly gone give ‘im twenty five to life. ‘Cause that’s how they do,” She explains as she hoists a garbage bag out of a garbage can and begins to tie it up. “That’s how they do. Lock you up an’ throw away the key. They maybe don’t even have no key.”
Ms. Woods proves correct, in that there is indeed an immigrant on trial. On the seventh floor of the State Supreme Court building, a man from Trinidad, by the name of Roger T., stands in front of Judge Theodore Jones, inside of a packed courtroom. The front row and the jury box are filled with dozens of journalists, all of them white, except for Ray Sanchez of New York Newsday. The back rows are filled with transit workers, most of them black, many of them grandmothers. The lawyer representing the Attorney General of the State of New York, a towering man, stands and explains why we are all gathered together. “We are here because at approximately 3am on December 20th, Mr. Roger Toussaint announced a system wide strike. When asked about the legality of that strike, he said only, ‘There is the law and there is justice.’” The judge hands down a ten-day sentence for the man from Trinidad, and the courtroom empties out.
The many workers who had filled the back of the courtroom, now fill an entire car on a Manhattan bound R train. Two female passengers riding the train look on in shock and confusion, as the sight of TWU Local 100 colors leave them wondering if the strike is on again. “Don’t worry darlin’. We just goin’ to the immigration rally,” explains a female transit worker, carrying a sign that says “We Are All Immigrants.” At City Hall the group climbs the steps to join the crowd that has gathered together to inform the government of their intentions.
Flags are waving everywhere. Ecuador, Mexico Haiti, Peru, Guyana, Panama, Puerto Rico, Pakistan, Russia, Honduras, El Salvador, Ireland, China, and countless other nations are all represented. The crowd shouts, “Si Se Puede!” and “Un Pueblo Unido, Jamas Sera Vencido!” Many famous politicians have already spoken and gone home for the day. Yet the crowd continues to grow. Large television screens and banks of speakers have been set up every few blocks so that the crowd can see and hear whoever is at the podium. The speakers at the podium express pride and call out to the various nations on hand.
“This is beautiful. You can only love this,” explains David Abney, a 63 year old guidance counselor from Crown Heights Brooklyn. “All these people. It’s a beautiful thing. They parta this country, jus’ like Goerge Bush is. I was born here. But I’m glad to see these folks. Happy they could join us. And man, that borders wide-open baby. People runnin’ for they lives. And I’m happy to see ‘em when they get here. We gotta get ‘em some rights now. But see, a lotta people don’t want that. They want business as usual. Jus’ happy makin’ money. They rely on indentured servitude. But we lookin’ to change all that. We out here for total amnesty. See, you gotta know your history brother man. This country is based on total amnesty. You got Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. They started a war in the name of slavery, and half a million people got killed. And you see what they got. They didn’t spend one day in jail. They got total amnesty. So we out here in the American tradition. Total Amnesty.”
Signs with political messages are spread around, interspersed among the flags and the faces of the young and old. “This is a family day,” explains Carmita Oquendo from Ecuador. “Everybody is out here in peace. Look, there’s more babies than grown ups. There’s whole entire families. I’m here with my mother, my father, my bother, my sister, my nephew, and my niece,” she explains as she points to her brother who is wearing a shirt that says “End Deportation Now,” and her nephew who is a baby in a stroller, waving a Jesus flag.
“Kyan’t deport peace an’ love,” explains a man with a Jamaican flag draped over his back. “Kyan’t deport love. Y’undastan’ bruddah? Kyan’t deport love. All de people yuh see here. Dem ‘ave only love. Look on de news bruddah. Is hijackin’an’ kidnappin’ all ovah de eart’. Is war everywhere. But de people on de street today. Dem don’ ‘ave not one tank an’ gun. Yuh see dem bruddah? Dem don’ ‘ave not one tank an’ gun. Dem ‘ave only one love. My name? Mista Brown. Mista Dennis Brown, livin’ in Flatbush Brooklyn.”
Mr. Muaad Al-Hamza from Yemen has been here for three years. “I am living in one-furty-five streed. I wurdk in store,” he explains. “Evryday is haad wurdk. Evrybuddy wunt to play mega-meellion. Bacon, egg and cheese. Shouting and screaming. Is haad wurdk. But this is my home. In one-furty-five streed. Muaad from Yemen.”
Bobby McCoy is a union electrician, who arrived in New York from Ireland six years ago. “Legalize the Irish. That’s what I’m tellin’ ya. Hell legalize everything green. Bush seen how hard we work. How hard all the immigrants work. Legalize everybody,” he shouts as he is swept along with the crowd.
A man with a Puerto Rican flag wrapped around one wrist and a Dominican flag wrapped around the other, stands on a manhole cover, as the crowd streams past him on all sides. “Nah. I ain’t movin’ papa. I was born right here. They givin’ electric shocks in New York City. On the manhole covers son. You step on a manhole cover and catch a shock, then Bloomberg gives you a million dollars. It was in the Post. He gives you a million cash. He keeps it right in his pocket. That’s why I’m not movin’. Even when this is over. I’ll be right here, cars swervin’ around me. I’m not movin. Yo look at that bullshit,” he says as he gestures to one of the large screens, which is flashing the number 125,000. “You gotta be kiddin’ me. Its way more people than that out here. Cops hasslin’ people everywhere. Half these Mexicans just waved they flag then turned around and went home. Who gave ‘em that number? Pataki? They brought Giulianni back so he could count people? They got that number from the New York Post. That’s why we gotta boycott the Post. They stay lyin’ all day and all night. Its no less than less than five million people out here right now. Maybe ten million. Somewhere between five and ten million people. No question papa. See everybody just does what Bloomberg says. Bloomberg says its only eleven people out here, then its only eleven people out here. Bloomberg says George Steinbrenner needs to use your livin’ room, then you just go outside an’ wait ‘till he’s done. C’mon man. No. I’m not movin’ from this manhole cover. I’m tellin’ you that right now. Uh oh. Look at this guy. They brought this guy out here now,” he says, as he gestures to the screen once again. “Nobody move, nobody gets hurt.”
Featured on the giant screen was the man from Trinidad, who had recently arrived from downtown Brooklyn. “I just came from the State Supreme Court,” he explains. “They say I’m a criminal, and the leader of 35,000 criminals. I am to go to jail….There is something wrong with this country when 11 and a half million people are called criminals just for trying to do an honest days work and take care of their families in the richest country in the world…..Everybody here today should think long and hard about what is happening here in America. We have a government that creates immigrants by the millions, and then mistreats them when they get here. If you have tyranny and oppression and famine and poverty around the world, you are going to have immigrants coming to the US. No wall is going to stop them. No fence with barbed wire on the Mexican border or frozen moat on the Canadian border. It will just make it easier to arrest and brutalize them. We don’t need a wall. We need a new foreign policy so people can make a decent living and live in peace in their home countries…. If we are all criminals, America needs a new set of laws. That’s why we say, NO JUSTICE! NO PEACE! Say it with me. NO JUSTICE! NO PEACE!”
“You know what’s gonna happen to that guy right,” said manhole cover man. “See, he told Pataki to go fuck himself. Now he’s out here shoutin’ with all these Mexicans. Man, he’s gonna be in Guantanamo Bay. That’s where he’s headed. Guantanamo Bay. I’m not playin’ wit’ chu papa. For real. And I ain’t movin’ from this spot for nobody. That’s between me an’ Bloomberg. I want total amnesty. Total amnesty for all these people out here. Bush and them clowns started a war, and killed all those people, and they got amnesty. They shoulda got the electric chair. But they got amnesty. They said they did it so the Iraqis could vote. Guess what. These people right here wanna vote too. But chu don’t need no goddamned war about it. We want amnesty like Bush and them got. But man, you got this guy on TV everynight. The fat guy on CNN cryin’ about immigration. Yeah, Lou Dobbs. Exactly. Yo this guy, maaan. He’s too much. Let him mow his own motherfuckin’ lawn. You know what I’m sayin’. Let him deliver Chinese food on a bicycle. Ridin’ around Brooklyn an’ shit. Gettin’ robbed for tips in the stairwell. Fat bastard. Lou Dobbs ain’t no damn Indian. Everyday on TV shoutin’ call the police. Stop cryin’ arready man. Damn! You could write that down. You could tell ‘im I said that. He could look me up in the phone book. My last name is Perez. If its more than one Perez in the phone book, I’m the one that’s in the Bronx,” he concludes as he remains planted on the manhole cover, while the crowd continues to flood past him
Pablo Picatto, an immigrant from Mexico, is a professor of Latin American History at Columbia University. “We are seeing something very important,” he explains, as he looks at all of the faces around him. “People are asserting themselves. They realize this situation of having no rights cannot go on indefinitely. People are realizing this on a massive scale. And we are witnessing something that goes beyond this day. Something that goes beyond this year. Something historic.”
Perhaps he is right. After all, we got Emiliano Z. from Morelos Mexico out here. And we got Roger T. from Trinidad who announced a system wide strike at 3am on December 20th. And we got Ecuador, Mexico Haiti, Peru, Guyana, Panama, Puerto Rico, Pakistan, Russia, Honduras, El Salvador, Ireland, China, countless other nations, and evryday is haad wurdk. They givin’ electric shocks in New York City, and its five to ten million people out here, an’ dem don’ ‘ave not one tank an’ gun. The border’s wide-open baby, and people runnin’ for they lives. Bring your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, your nephew, your niece. Don’t worry about Lou Dobbs. He ain’t no damn Indian. He sees the baby with the Jesus flag, and he shouts call the police. He needs to learn the words. Si Se Puede! Total Amnesty New York City! One Love! No Justice, No Peace!
SAVITRI DURKEE:
Short Lila- a rant
I was at a big store buying underwear. They were of different colors and patterns and happened to be on sale. I was broke, but not too broke to buy four pairs of silk underwear for no other reason than they happened to be on sale. I could buy things, I just didn’t have any cash. The line was very long, I stood behind eight other people, three of whom had carts and coupons. I estimated I would be there for at least twenty minutes. I eavesdropped.
A man said,
Oh he knew what he was doing allright
and a woman said
well he’s never exactly been in his right mind.
and the man said
you say that whenever someone does something stupid.
and she said
well it’s the truth.
And he said
No it ain’t. it aint the truth, he’s in his right mind allright, he
just plays dumb so nobody’ll blame him for anything.
and she said
I ain’t saying he’s not to blame, I’m saying he’s never been, as
far as I can tell, in his right mind.
And the man, loudly,
Oh bullshit Pauline.
and they were quiet.
I had been up to that point, on the man’s side, the man talking. The woman had a weak voice and seemed untrustworthy. They were joined by a fat young boy in a monster truck t shirt.
Mom, he said, gimme fity cent so I can get me a soda. She gave him fifty cents and a minute later he returned from the machine to stand beside her.
Mom, he said, you think I could get one of them hats? He pointed at a shelf stocked with blaze orange hunting hats in all different styles.
Which one she said
I don’t know, he said. He walked over to the shelf.
He started trying them on. His hair was black. He checked them all in the mirror, one after another. As far as I could tell they all looked about the same.
What kind does Jimmy have? his mother said, and the man, who
had been silent for a while said, Who the hell cares what kind of hat Jimmy has?
Well I was just wanting to know, she said,
Jimmys’ like this, the boy said, holding up a mesh baseball cap with a long brim, but I don’t like it, he said, and I don’t like
Jimmy much neither.
Boy, don’t you get smart with your mother, the man said. You watch yourself, he said, I’ll whup you.
You get whichever one you want, the mom said and the father said, no, he ain’t getting one. Boy you go on outside that door before you spend all my money. he said
But they’re only two dollars, the boys said,with a little whine in his voice
and his father yelled, loud, so everyone stared, Boy, I told you, get the hell outside the door and quit running your mouth.
Ahead of them a lady holding some lottery tickets winced and smiled at the boy sympathetically. The line inched forward and the couple was silent behind me. I wondered how they met. The man walked away from the woman towards a tower of reading glasses. He was lean and his skin was blasted white. He tried on glasses in much the same way his son had
tried on the hats, stooping and glancing at each pair in the mirror, taking them off and then cramming them carelessly back on the rack.
Why you trying those on, the woman asked
Because.
He put on a pair of very thick magnifying glasses and looked right at me, his pupils enlarged to the size of poker chips. He glared , I was frightened and looked away. He came back and handed the chosen pair to his wife.
Why you getting those, she asked again
Because, he said, I’m old and I can’t see.
Oh. said his wife.
Suddenly it became clear that the boy, their boy, was fighting
with three girls on the sidewalk outside. Their shouts weren’t loud enough to hear through the glasss but when the man opened the door the words yo, fat and ass hammered through. The man grabbed his son by the arm and dragged him off down the street..
I felt funny. And I guessed I didn’t need those panties at all., what I needed, I realized, was to get away from there. I abandoned my purchase on a mountain of discount candies and ran out the door. I turned down the alley toward my car and saw the man and his son in front of a truck down the block. The father was hitting the boy in the face . The son was already crying and exhausted, his arms rising to his face for protection a little to late, a little too low. He was programmed to lose. I screamed really loud and threw myself across the hood of a car. The metal was hot in the sun.Perfect for a cat, I thought. Then it was like someone shook me awake. I opened my eyes. The man and his son were gone, their truck was gone, the whole street looked empty. Everything had changed.
I went back to the store and recovered my panties from the mound of candy and dried up chocolate. I got in the line , and considered the man in front of me. He was buying plastic flowers and a gold framed print of a cheetah, he had sneakers on and his pants did not fit very well, the cashier rang up his order and he handed her a credit card just like mine.
Flag- a rhapsody
There was a day in the seventh grade, when I still had perfect marks and got selected for extra activities like door decoration and flag duty and that day I asked if Jason Ivey could come with me to take it down because the kid who usually did it with me was home sick and I couldn’t fold the flag alone and the teacher said okay fineyou have 23 minutes exactly.
It was autumn, October, the trees were changing color and the fields had started to harden and gray, Jason and I hid behind a rust colored van and smoked stolen pot out of a small wooden pipe. A few fields away we could see the school busses lining up at the elementary school. We were talking about the Russians. It would be a day like this. He said. With little clouds and a dangerous blue sky, I said, They will choose a great day to destroy us, I said don’t you think? We we weren’t scared though, not at all, we were laughing. By then we only had 12 minutes to get the flag, fold it and be back in class so we ran to the pole, and started taking it down. We weren’t paying attention, or were hurrying to much and we tangled the rope badly, and then we just kept making the knot worse, I could hear the blood in my ears, and fingers felt rubbery and time got all slippery. Jason found a piece of metal and wedged it in the knot and we finally got it open and the flag slid down on the rope and then we had that big flag in our arms like a quilt and I told Jason maybe I didn’t think it would be on a day like this , if we were going to have that war we already would have, or even maybe we have already had, I mean other than the time we already did ---why are you saying “we” he asked me---why do you keep saying we?
And then everyone started pouring out of our school, in tidy little rows, and they came out of the elementary school too, everyone, dozens of little lines if people pouring out, like worms escaping an apple and Jason and I shook our heads in disbelief- “I knew it, he said, I knew it and I felt a pit in my stomach opening like thunder and we dropped that flag and started running, straight at the school as fast as we could, until I saw our teacher waving at us, with both arms, like he was directing a plane---and I grabbed Jason’s arm and steered him away toward the soccer fields and we ran and ran until we were just into the woods on the far side of the goal and only then did we dare look back – and everyone was just going back inside, the buildings were still there and the sky was still blue and the little kids were piling on the busses and jason started laughing and said, “it’s a fire drill.” And my eyes fell on a deer, standing motionless in the trees, 50 yards in front of me, looking back at me. I grabbed Jason’s arm, but he was still laughing and didn’t see her, we turned and started the long walk back across the fields toward the pole and the great big flag in a little heap beneath the rope.
MARIKA JOSEPHSON:
A Memo from Rummy
by Marika Josephson
September 1, 2006
From: Donald Rumsfeld Office of the Secretary of Defense To: Democrats
RE: My Job Performance
Dear Democrats,
My word, you’d think the sky was falling and the world was about to collapse with the way that all of you have been complaining recently. All I hear these days is “Rumsfeld is incompetent for this,” and “Fire Rumsfeld for doing that.” My goodness, I’ve never seen people get into such a tizzy over a job! I know that most of you Nazi-loving ex-hippie, ex-flower children haven’t spent much time thinking about the strategies of war, so let me try to highlight our main defense mechanisms in words that even you can understand. That way you’ll all know how complicated the work is over here in Defense and you can all quit your bellyaching.
1. Things Explode
So you’re worried about body armor, are you? Well let me tell you something: When you’re at war, things explode. That’s just the way it is. We put large bombs on airplanes, the airplanes drop the bombs on the ground, and the bombs break open into gigantic fireballs that throw pieces of building and earth everywhere. You think body armor is going to save you from that? Of course people are going to get hurt—don’t you think that some people probably pulled a hangnail when we dropped the bombs over Hiroshima? But let’s remember that Iraqis can pick up and leave Iraq any time they want—nobody’s forcing them to stay in a country filled with militant Islamo-fascists. So if some “innocent” people are killed, they’re not completely innocent if they refuse to leave their godless, warring nation, are they? Remember, the death of inno_cents_ is not the same as the death of innocence. If Iraqis die—hey, dying happens. We had to break some eggs to get rid of the Nazis during World War II, didn’t we?
2. You’re Not Allowed to Know Everything
Secondly, you’re not allowed to know everything—it’s called national security. Let’s not get our panties in a twist over this domestic spying program. Come on, do you really think anyone cares about your pointless conversations about your Nana’s recipe for blueberry pie, or the best way to whittle balsa wood? Get real. And if you are a terrorist, of course we’re listening—we always have been. But we can’t just tap you on the shoulder to make sure you know you’re being monitored all the time. I mean, do you think that we told Hitler we were listening to his conversations with Eichmann? “Oh, excuse me Hitler, I just want to let you know that the American government is listening in on this conversation about wiping out an entire race of people by loading them onto cattle cars and throwing them into death camps.” I don’t think so.
But look, we’re all realists here—if you just can’t get over this whole phone-monitoring thing there are some steps you can take to protect yourself. First of all, I’d just stop talking about the President, or about things you’d like to do to Dick Cheney in general, period. Stop saying words like “U.S. government,” or “bomb,” or “Sometimes I wonder about Islam.” And furthermore, I’d stop mentioning famous landmarks, places where security looks lax, empty warehouses, airplanes, boats, buses, long tunnels, subway stations, bridges you have to cross everyday on your commute to work—you get the picture. If you want to keep talking about that stuff, look, you’re fair game, that’s all I’m saying. You might as well just admit right now that you’ve memorized Mein Kampf and walk around with a little moustache under your nose and your arm permanently raised toward your great fascist forefathers. You’re going to be labeled a “known phone,” as we say over here, no longer a “phone unknown.”
3. Terrorists are Terrible and Diplomats are Diplomatic
Which brings me to my next point. I know that most of you don’t have to worry about this on a daily basis, working at your yoga centers and health food stores, but those of us who work in Defense have to watch out for terrorists, okay? That’s our job. Day in and day out. And it’s not easy—do you want to know why? Terrorists are not sympathetic, they’re not funny, they’re not adorable, they’re terrible. That’s why they’re called terrorists. Terr-i-ble. If they were pacifists, they’d be peaceful—they’d believe in pacifism. If they were herbalists—you all should know this one—they’d believe in herbalism. (And herbalists plant a lot of things, but they don’t plant bombs on airplanes.) But they’re terrorists, so take a wild guess—what do they believe in? That’s right, terrorism.
Now, this seems like as good time as any to address the little tiff over the photo of myself shaking the hand of Saddam Hussein. I know this is going to be shocking to you all, but, what did you expect me to do? Of course I shook his hand—I was a diplomat. And, follow along with me people, what do diplomats do? You got it—they’re diplomatic. But beyond diplomacy, you know what? I don’t have any control over what Saddam Hussein does. Saddam Hussein is going to do what Saddam Hussein is going to do. Doing happens. I mean, we had to fire on the Axis soldiers to invade Normandy, right? Are you saying that we never should have invaded Normandy? Should we just pretend that all of Nazi Germany never happened?
4. Time is Long
And lastly, I want to say that war takes time, and time is long. Goodness me, it’s not like you can just fight a war in the time it takes to make a bag of microwave popcorn. Of course we may have initially underestimated the number of troops we needed by a few thousand, but as I’ve said above, terrorists are terrible, things explode, and doing happens. I don’t expect you to understand all the details since you’re not allowed to know everything, anyway. So let’s just calm down here, folks, we have plenty of people in our military to go around. Around and around. Fighting for the long lengths of time. I really can’t explain any more than that to you people if you can’t get your wheatgrass-drinking heads around it. So let’s just take a deep breath and count to ten before making any more outrageous assertions about my job next time—that way it will be more obvious to everyone who’s who, and what’s what, and just who sanctioned the gas chambers at Auschwitz anyway.
In faithful service,
Donald Rumsfeld
posted by Mark W. Read at 4:38 PM
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