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The Crying Game
Okay, so I’m sure you guys have noticed that this page looks a lot different than it did a couple of weeks ago; all Dead Rebel Society pages have undergone a radical overhaul for the new year. All of us esteemed writers were responsible for upgrading the content on our new pages and for coming up with different “focus” or “specialty” columns in which to express our ideas and opinions. Since we’re always in the market for unique ideas that haven’t been flogged to death by the mainstream, this subcolumn column (Waambulance Ride) was one of the first ideas that my editor, Linda, and I came up with. I’m continually surprised that this particular cultural phenomenon gets little to no attention from mainstream media pundits; after all, it’s all around us, all the time, so much so that we almost don’t notice it.
I’m talking, of course, about the culture of crybabyhood. Yes, that’s a real word. I know because I just made it up.
So consider this the one little corner of the Internet that shines an unerring (and unflattering) spotlight on politicians, celebrities and anyone else who uses their fifteen minutes in the public eye to spotlight their “victimhood”, be it real or imagined. Well, I’m here to give them the attention they crave. All those famous crybabies can go ahead and dry their eyes, because this column will be all about them, all the time.
The first group of crybabies who’ve resoundingly earned a mention here have spent the better part of the last couple of weeks throwing an impressively loud and destructive tantrum – indeed, they seem to be in the grip of the most monstrous case of colic ever recorded. I refer, of course, to the Muslim rioters who torched Scandinavian embassies in several countries in the Middle East. Now, it could be argued that this action alone doesn’t really qualify these rioters for crybaby status – it’s not like rioting, violence and ill-wishing Western countries is without precedence among fundamentalist Muslims. What made this week’s bedlam different from the usual Middle Eastern bedlam, though, was that it was sparked by a fucking cartoon.
Yes, some Muslims in the Middle East – particularly those in already West-hating countries like Iran and Syria – took extreme umbrage to a cartoon published in a Danish newspaper’s editorial section of a beetle-browed, stereotypical-looking Muslim man, identified as the prophet Mohammed, wearing a time bomb for a turban. The rioters, who carried signs wishing death on Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland (evidently hoping to cover all their bases in case their knowledge of which Scandinavian country was which turned out to be too sketchy), cited the cartoon as evidence of the West’s blasphemy towards Islam. Apparently, the Muslim world’s grasp of the concept of irony isn’t all that tight. As they raged through the streets, setting buildings afire and chanting “Death to Europe and America”, they seemed completely and sincerely unaware that they were bearing out the very point the cartoon was attempting to make in the first place.
A hint for all you firebug marchers and suicide bombers – if you don’t want Westerners to exercise their right to free speech (my own religion, thank you very much) and paint Mohammed as a proponent of violence – quit strapping dynamite to your torso, walking into a public venue and screaming “Praise be to God and Mohammed!” just before detonating yourself. (You may also want to refrain from mentioning Mohammed in those home videos you seem so fond of making – you know, the ones that feature you, your friends, and the random cowering Westerner whose head you cut off in the finale.)
Of course, fair is fair, and Middle Eastern Muslims claimed no monopoly on crybabyhood last week. The good old US of A provided her own dazzling display of double-decker bi-partisan boobying, cleverly packaged within a legitimate occasion for crying, a funeral. When memorial services for Martin Luther King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, were held last week, it provided all the usual heavy-hitting statesmen with an opportunity to not only grieve, but to start slinging shit at one another like a bunch of disgruntled mud-wrestling strippers. Our most mild-mannered of ex-presidents, Jimmy Carter, surprisingly flung the first turd by mentioning Dubya’s disastrous handling of Hurricane Katrina’s impact on New Orleans, tying it in with the race issue to keep it semi-topical. Nice shot, Jimbo – you went where not even Jesse Jackson dared to go. (You know you’ve entered Bizarro World when Jesse Jackson actually becomes your go-to guy for restraint and dignity.) Bill Clinton was up next, and while he didn’t pull out the full-on Kanye routine that Carter did, he did manage to work in an oblique plug for his wife’s political aspirations.
Democrats using an inappropriate occasion to push their agenda and take potshots at Republicans? Why, that’s just unheard of and without precedent…unless you count Paul Wellstone’s funeral, all of Mike Moore’s movies, the 9-11 hearings, etc., etc…okay, so maybe it’s not so unheard of after all. But of course, the only thing more predictable than the Dems’ case of political Tourette’s is the Republicans’ pussyaching in the aftermath of the occasion.
Nobody loves to be wounded and offended by lapses in social propriety on the part of their opponents more so than the American Right, and they tore into the spectacle of the King memorial like hyenas tearing into an elephant carcass (or whatever kind of carcass it is that hyenas tear into…hey, this is a political column, not “Wild Kingdom”). “How could they?” sniffed Hannity and O’Reilly the day after the memorial. “This was simply not the time or the place.”
“Just look how desperate they are,” righties said to each other. “It would be funny if it weren’t so damned disgraceful.”
Actually, disgraceful or not, it was damned funny that a soft-spoken dude like Jimmy Carter could get famously caustic and bombastic guys like Bill O’Reilly all worked up. It is absolutely hilarious to see politicians and pundits acting like such big jerks and pitching temper tantrums over long-standing disagreements. Comforting, too – if for no other reason than it reminds us that at the end of the day we do indeed have a government by, of, and for the people - at least in the respect that they booby about inconsequential bullshit just like the rest of us.
