There is a particular meme that has appeared in my Facebook newsfeed more than once, and I am infuriated by its flippant callousness and deep miscomprehension of recent events revealing systemic injustice in law enforcement. Perhaps you have seen it too:
In the aftermath of the deaths of Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, and many others over this past year or so, I saw this meme posted ... and I cannot fathom how anyone would wave away deadly force (gunshot wound, chokehold, etc.) as "poor treatment" -- as if these incidents were merely a matter of officers being a little too rough, impolite, rude, or neglectful. Unarmed people have been killed. Families have been shattered and loved ones and communities are grieving. And none of it is funny or deserving of this kind of sneering sarcasm. And though I am not really into debate via infobyte, I have perused some threads of comments emerging from the above meme. In appreciation and gratitude for some of the images and quips used to challenge, rebut, reprove and disavow it, I offer this gallery of responses below.
Because this meme must be dissed, defanged, and strewn of any principalities lurking there that aim to misinform, ignorize, shallowize, and condescend to the public --
Because "being treated poorly by police" is a such a horribly minimizing and dehumanizing phrase to use in light of the realities --
Because this is so true for so many of us --
Because somehow, unarmed teens in bikinis must be forcibly contained and chained --
Because when "laws" can culminate in you being killed for simply existing, there is something deeply wrong with those laws --
Because of myriad discrepancies. For example --
And besides --
Because, innocent or guilty, we actually do not have an instant death penalty, even if some folks might prefer it that way --
And because so many people love to blame this guy for our sociocultural illnesses --
Even though the roots of the problem lie elsewhere --
And yet --
In conclusion, to vent some righteous anger to the contemptuous meme that set this all off, and to the disdainfully sneering mindset that it transmits, (and yes, I know that he doesn't look like a first-century Jew here) --
I
have never been a huge fan of flag-waving.
I think it is possible to express love of people and country and homeland
without the nationalistic hyperbole that frequently attends the veneration of
flags. Frankly, an overabundance of flags makes me nervous. I still vividly
remember, for example, the instant ubiquity of U.S. flags after 9/11.Initially, it was completely expected -- and
understandable – for the flag to become a symbol of sympathy for and solidarity
with the United States and with all whose lives were lost, or tragically
transformed, that day. But before too long, the flag became a misguided call to
war and vengeance. Similarly, “United We Stand” posters, which initially
implied some defensible stance against terrorism, became a way to proclaim “we all
agree to the necessity of invading Iraq.” War against Iraq came to be seen as
the just, honorable, and right thing to do, especially as it was coupled with
the propaganda about Saddam Hussein readying weapons of mass destruction to launch
against the U.S. If you disagreed, you were at best, unpatriotic, and at worst,
a traitor. Early on, it was rough going
for people who didn’t display flags and who did not want the U.S. to invade
Iraq. (I still recall how a man attending some public presidential event was arrested because he was wearing a peace-sign T-shirt!)
Neither
do I loathe most flags. I know that people who fly the U.S. flag are not
necessarily rabid nationalists or let’s-go-bomb-Iran warmongers. They may be expressing love of homeland, a remembrance
and respect for those who serve in the military, or an honoring of
constitutional ideals -- however well or poorly realized our history has proven those ideals to be.
I
have a bevy of mixed feelings about the Confederate flag. Make no mistake: I recognize
it as an emblem of the secessionist South and its promotion of slavery and
white supremacy. And yet I have also known people who felt that it represented
something else. In my early twenties, during my cafeteria bus-girl stint in
Death Valley, a white co-worker invited me to a party at his desert shack. The
crowd there was a kitchen-and-wait-staff mixture of mostly whites, but also
a few other people of color. Along one wall, next to his dresser mirror,
a medium-sized Confederate flag was tacked.
At some point (fuzzy in memory now), it became the topic of
conversation. Not a debate – perhaps someone had simply asked him if the flag
had been handed down in his family. I surmised the flag did have some
connection to his southern roots – but for him it was mostly an expression of a
proud anti-authoritarianism. He fancied himself a “rebel” because he greatly
distrusted government and religion, loved southern food and southern music
(as in Lynyrd Skynyrd and Creedence Clearwater Revival – but also the B-52s and
REM), and held a muckraking approach toward institutions, especially savoring
monkeywrench-style actions to protect the environment, a la Edward Abbey. Later
I noticed he also had a couple of other flags: the Ethiopian flag (which he thought
of as the "Rasta-reggae" flag) and the British flag. Apparently he enjoyed flags representing
his musical tastes. This co-worker was not, to my mind, a slavery-loving bigot.
He
is not the only white person I’ve known who has had this kind of “alternative”
take on the Confederate flag. Because of people like him, I’ve tried (though not always successfully) to
withhold my “that’s a racist redneck” judgment on individuals who sport this
flag until I know more about them – just as I do not automatically conclude
that people who fly the U.S. flag are xenophobic or toxically nationalistic.
But,
of course – the sight of a Confederate flag always troubles me at some level. It is not benign, like the sight of flags flapping
side-by-side at the United Nations. I have seen too many images of Klansmen
carrying Confederate flags (though yes, I know they carry U.S flags too). And
I know too well that the secessionist government this flag represented would
have despised my very existence as a black child of a white mother.
The
parents who adopted me, both black, were born in South Carolina. So I’ve been
to South Carolina many times for family gatherings. At family picnics or in the home of aunts and
cousins, there is a rich and sweet down-homeness there that I love. But venturing out into wider public arenas there
is challenging, because the level of racial segregation – at least in the
smaller towns – remains entrenched and disturbingly resistant to the existence
of people like me, my siblings, and my cousins with spouses of another race.
I
was last there for a family reunion in the early 2000s – a gathering of around
70 people. Most of us were staying in the same motel, and we spent much of our
time at the homes of elders nearby. But one morning, I, along with my white
husband, my light-skinned and hazel-eyed brother, my darker-toned cousin and
her Jewish husband, went to eat breakfast at a nearby Denny’s. As we entered
the restaurant together, we all felt and heard this disquieting hush among the
nearly all-white crowd of customers. We were greeted and seated politely enough
– but many flabbergasted and contemptuous stares followed us as we were led to
our table. Not subtle at all – folks were rubbernecking and beaming hard
hate-stares. One woman glared with her mouth open, as if she were witnessing a
crime and about to call the police. I felt like we were extraterrestrials, or
covered in blood, or naked.
Once
we were seated, the tension dissipated somewhat as people re-huddled and
returned to their breakfast conversations – some of them casting occasional
sidewise glances at us. I noticed, however, that the later appearance of a
black family did not elicit the same response. It was the appearance of black
and tan and white people together that had been the violation. Thus: it was
okay for black and white people to eat in the same restaurant. They just
weren’t supposed to eat together, at one
table, in the same restaurant. We
weren’t supposed to be family.
There
were similar incidents throughout the rest of our stay there – like going into
a store and just picking up the vibe that our presence was off-putting or
pissing someone off. There would be
sudden, tense motions – heavy car door slams, or the over-loud return of a
grocery cart, hushed whispers to children. At a Subway Sandwiches with my
brother and husband one day, a worried-looking older black man came over and
asked where we were from. “I’m from Kansas,” said my brother, “and my sister
and her husband here live in California.” “Ohh, okay,” the man said, nodding.
My brother asked him, in turn, “Where are you from?” The man seemed to
appreciate this inquiry. “Well, I was born in Birmingham, but been here about
30 years now. I figured y’all were traveling.” His demeanor communicated “Be
careful, y’all.”
Okay:
we survived South Carolina, as always. We had mostly good times, not everyone
was a bigot, and there are plenty of worse things that can happen and that have
happened to black folks & interracial couples in the South. But when I’m in
the South, particularly in small-town or rural areas, I have to be watchful,
and I have to steel myself. (Actually,
this is true of the entire U.S. – it just feels especially true of the South).
If I see someone with a confederate flag, I cannot help but be unnerved. I
cannot be sure of the intentions of someone sporting this flag. It always
carries a threatening undercurrent. This
remains true even as I logically recognize that not everyone with this flag
despises my existence.
I
think that the co-worker I knew back in Death Valley honestly did not feel that
his particular display of the Confederate flag was a pro-segregationist or
white supremacist expression. And I accept the sincerity of some of the people
who have insisted that, for them, this flag represents a regional pride or a
desire to honor ancestors who died in the Civil War – and not a support for
slavery.
But
now, in this moment, after the conversation that has re-emerged again as a
result of the tragedy in Charleston – I wonder why anyone would still want to
cling to this flag as an emblem of rebellion, or nostalgia, or regional pride. Now that everyone has been reintroduced to its
origins as a battleflag in the war over slavery, its recyclings as a white
supremacist banner for the KKK and as a southern state pro-segregationist and
anti-civil-rights proclamation in the 1950-60s – and, most poignantly, hearing the
pain it evokes in so many descendants of slaves in this country – why would you
still want to fly it now? Or make the weird claim that moving it from a
statehouse to a museum is a form of censorship or historical revisionism? Of
course you have a right to own it or display it in your yard, in your home, on
your rear bumper, on your T-shirt. But you can no longer innocently claim that
it has no connection to slavery or bigotry or racism or terrorism.
(Brief
rant -- And no: Obama is not trying to outlaw airings of the movie Gone With
the Wind. A friend of a friend has actually been spreading
that bullshit on Facebook. Get a grip and get a life! Rant over.)
For
those who see in this a hackneyed argument about political correctness, I ask: Once
you learn that some non-essential item you own evokes a well-founded fear and
anxiety in a segment of the citizens of your own country, what is your
rationale behind continuing to constantly display this item? Just because you
can? Because it is your right? Because you don’t care what others think, and
you enjoy flaunting that? What if someone you personally cared about felt
uneasy or threatened by it? What if someone you dearly loved saw in this item a
desire to obliterate their freedom, their humanity? Would you still want to
continually display it?
Or,
switch it around: How would you feel about someone who chose to constantly
exhibit an image from some primal nightmare of yours? After you told them that
it was getting to you? That you had
actually been traumatized by it? I know I’m Captain Obvious here – but might
you prefer that they not parade this thing every day, 24/7?
As
Rebecca Alpert wrote in her 1996 Tikkun article on political correctness, “I
believe that what some deride as ‘political correctness’ is really only a
caricatured description of what I always defined as common decency; a variation
on the Levitical precept that what is hateful to you, you should not do to
others.”
I
feel sad and ashamed for my country that it took the murder of 9 people in
church to get the Confederate flag down from the SC statehouse. Because really – in some ways that choice was
such a very small step – like the earliest beginnings of something long
overdue. The deeper problems of systemic injustices remain and are barely touched
by this decision over where and how a historical emblem should be displayed. I
do not want to get overly mired in arguments about when and where flags should
fly, not when there is so much else that needs to be done.
And
yet: I also cannot deny how affected I was by Representative Jenny Horne’s
pleading, at the South Carolina state house podium, to take the flag down. I had not expected any of it – I had not
expected at all to see this white Republican southern woman, a descendant of Confederates, rage and cry and beg to please, do this small thing, do
this commonly decent thing, make this one meaningful choice for damned once. In
response to other representatives’ longwinded arguments about the need to retain the flag to honor ancestors who fought in the Civil War, she declared :
"I'm sorry. I have heard enough about heritage. I
have a heritage: I am a lifelong South Carolinian. I am a descendant of
Jefferson Davis. OK? But that does not matter. It's not about Jenny Horne. It's
about the people of South Carolina who have demanded that this symbol of hate
come off of the Statehouse grounds." (For her entire 4+ minute soliloquy,
see the video below)
Her
emotion was genuine. I admit that I have been needing to see that kind of
emotion. As I witnessed her beseeching, I experienced a momentary release of
the grief and frustration that I and many others carry through life – that
ever-present sense of not being heard, of not being able to get through to the
white public at large the extent of the individual and collective wounds wrought by pervasive
racism, covert and overt, day in and day out. I have grown so tired and weary
of trying to communicate it, of offering examples and statistics, of searching
for words and stories that might clarify. I have felt stinging tinges of
cynicism and despair over it. I have given up trying and returned to trying and
given up yet again. But watching her has let me know, again (because of
course I have known it before, through cross-racial friendships and other
solidarities), that some moments, and some days, we are heard. Every once in a while,
hearing happens. What Ms. Horne did reminds me anew that we who struggle --in
whatever large or small ways we can -- for simple justice, common love, and
ordinary decencies never do so in vain. And perhaps what little I have done in
my years of tiny writing assignments and small-group dialogues might not be
just a crazy, stumbling dance among those who refuse to hear the beat. I see again that there is light in the heavy
gloom of history, small but significant steps in these raw, muddied fields.
I have not posted any cat images for a while. I believe that this one best expresses my New Year's resolution. Basically: keep breathing. Do the next right thing. One step at a time. And alla that.
If one does not toke the pot in high school, college and
dormitory life usually offers multiple opportunities to do so. During my first two years at college in Iowa in the late 70s, I turned such invitations down and stuck with the sugary
carbonated concoction known as "Champale" and the occasional cigarette as my
preferred intoxicants.
I was just plain afraid of repercussions. Our resident
assistant was a full-on law-and-order dorm-marm who called the students on our floor together
one day to announce her zero-tolerance policy on weed. “If I even smell it, I’m
calling the police,” she told us. “I am NOT kidding.” I believed her. I was even
a little worried to play my Rick James album, fearing that the party-hearty
song “Mary Jane” might catch her ears and put me under suspicion. After all, it
declared:
I’m in love with Mary Jane
I’m not the only one.
If Mary wanna play around
I let her have her fun
She’s not the kind of girl
That you can just tie down
She likes to spread her love
And turn your head around…
There were a couple of young women down the hall from
me who liked to live on the edge, however. Dorm-marm occasionally tagged along
when her football-player boyfriend traveled to away games. During these
authority-free nights, the stonerladies down the hall would invite a few
neighbors into their room, stuff a towel or two at the bottom of the door, and
share their Midwestern ragweed with any who desired it. I did feel a certain
pull and a curiosity – my roommate was a frequent guest and her frothiness upon
emerging from the undercover toking room was appealing. But my paranoid musings
kept me in check: Dorm-marm might unexpectedly return early. Even if I just sat
with the stoners and handed the joint around without partaking, the smell would
stick to my clothes. The police would be called and I, the
Rick-James-album-owning brown-skinned girl, would be fingered. Dorm-marm would
tell the police, “She listens to that ‘Mary Jane’ crap all the time, after all
– what more do you need to know?” I’d be arrested and convicted for Smelling
Like Pot and Listening to Subversive Pot Songs. This, I imagined, would carry a
sentence of several years, perhaps decades. My career-minded parents, so proud
of me for receiving a full college scholarship, would be terribly, abysmally
let down. I would never become the astronomer or meteorologist I’d planned on
being. My post-prison job prospects, if any, would likely be limited to burger-flipping,
housekeeping, or movie theater ushering. (Though, admittedly, ushering held a
certain appeal …)
Being an underage drinker, though? Dorm-marm had
absolutely NO problem with that.
* * *
In my sophomore year -- the fall of 1979 -- Milos
Forman’s film version of Hair came
out and was shown at the college theater. [Here is its delightful opening sequence]. Several friends and I got buzzed on Marlboros
and Blue Nun wine before viewing it one autumn Saturday night. I was already
familiar with its music (the Broadway cast recording, which I owned, also had lyrics that I felt I had to hide from the
ears of dorm-marm) but the film version -- with its exuberant dancing, irreverent songs,
trippy psychedelic sequences, and antiwar message – gave me an exquisite
thrill. At movie’s end, everyone remained seated in open-mouthed awe for a few
moments. That silence whispered: goddamn,
that was good.
The film had overflowed with a rambunctiously vivid
heartfulness and an effervescent abandon that was missing from my timid,
studious, undeclared-college-major life. And, of course, the significant
ingredient in the film’s liberating call of the wild was: drugs. Particularly pot, hash, and acid.
Not Champale. Not Blue Nun. Not Marlboro Lights.
I
need to get ahold of some honest-to-God real mind-bending shit someday,
I told myself. These sweet wines and
pissy beers are for church-goers, accounting majors, and bourgeois bitches.
Note: This is a slightly revised reflection that I originally shared in a Facebook group on August 11, in the midst of news reports about Isis attacks and right after the deaths of both Robin Williams and Michael Brown.
The
news around the world feels exceptionally dire lately. I know terrible
things (and much that we never hear about) happen every day, but this
morning -- even before I heard of Robin Williams' death -- I watched
part of a news broadcast -- going back and forth from the riots in
Missouri over the police killing of an unarmed black teenager (it was to
be his first week at college) and the increasingly disturbing wars in
the Middle East. I saw footage of an air drop of food & water to the
refugees trapped on Mount Sinjar in Iraq. The helicopter landed for
just a couple of moments and was immediately swarmed by desperate
people, some who boarded in a raw panic. The copter crew took as many as
they could, then lifted off. Soldiers on board had to shoot at nearby
militants on the ground to protect the helicopter. Then the camera
focused on a girl passenger -- perhaps 14 years old -- crying and
flinching at the sounds of machine-gun fire. Later in the afternoon,
that image returned to me as I was pondering a passage from Isaiah that I
am to read aloud in church next Sunday, including the line "I will bring
[them] to my holy mountain" -- I recalled the terrified girl on the
helicopter, and burst into tears. What a hell this holy mountain of our
world can be. These tears are my prayers of grief and of mercy for this
world, and for all who are grieving, suffering, or struggling with
the vicissitudes of life. Within this sadness, the tears are also a gift. I
feel paradoxically grateful when a brief image or a personal story hits
something deep within and releases a torrent. It keeps my heart open
and enables me to respond with a deeper tenderness to the people and
situations I encounter day-to-day. For me, it is frequently something
very specific -- like the raw footage of that girl -- that opens my dam
(which can be hard to open!) I think this is just one way in
which "prayer" -- or however one prefers to phrase it -- "works." We are
struck by a moment, an event -- we allow ourselves to be affected, or
it sneaks past our defenses -- and a spontaneous cry, a wordless yearning, a gutteral summoning, percolates and flows up from the soul. This interior spring then softens any dry riverbeds
within and spreads outward, through the heart and body and mind, in tears, in
love, in creativity, or in action. In touch with this saturating
stream, we incarnate ("give body to") prayer: the word becomes flesh. Thus prayer is literally able to contact and affect others, in
ways that we may never consciously recognize. (Might this mean that the news media -- despite its manipulative aims -- occasionally triggers prayer and the beginnings of compassion...?)
Sometime in
the late 60s, when I was not yet ten, I came across the possibility that Bob
Denver, aka the lanky Gilligan of Gilligan’s Island, did drugs. Some rare re-run of The Many Lives of Dobie Gillis had aired,
and I grokked that the character Maynard -- Gilligan in some former incarnation
-- was, like, a beatnik. And beatniks,
of course, smoked drugs and went on trips.
That drug
was weed. Aka pot, grass, tea, ganja, reefer, green, maryjane, herb, whacky tobaccy. I adored Gilligan and
thus was horrified. “Oh my God,” I wondered, “does Gilligan smoke drugs?” * The sweet, goofy first mate of the
shipwrecked Minnow might be … an addict? Was it really true that the Minnow would be lost, the Minnow
would be lost…?
I cannot
recall the specifics, but there had been some anti-drug speakers at school –
usually cranky, retired police officers -- who persuaded me that weed, acid,
heroin, speed and the like were all quickly and equally deadly. There would be
hallucinations, wild abandon, mouth-frothing, seizures, addiction, leaps from
skyscrapers.
And, ruh-roh: Shaggy, Scooby-Doo’s big buddy, also had that air of some kind of beatnik pot-toker. But Shaggy
was just a cartoon character. Gilligan felt much more, like, real.
Dear God, I prayed, please don’t let Gilligan OD on pot.
* * *
When I was
12 or 13, my next-door girlfriend’s older brothers started smoking weed that they bought at school. I noticed
its heavy skanky smell and knew it had to be DRUGS. They offered hits to me, smirking at me with bloodshot eyes,
and I always coolly refused and acted outwardly nonchalant about the presence
of the devil’s herb. But inwardly, I judged them: They could do something terrible, smoking those drugs. There could be
madness, gun fights, heart attacks. My girlfriend might be forced to sell
herself so they could buy drugs.
Madness, gun
fights, and heart attacks did occur in our neighborhood. Sadly, a local pimp actually
did attempt to "turn out" both my friend and her sister. (They turned him out instead, thank God.) But none of those horrible
realities had anything to do with the marijuana being smoked next door. On the contrary, Andrew and Rufus -- my girlfriend’s brothers -- mellowed out and spent more time playing music.
Andrew’s electric bass got deeper and funkier. Rufus became quieter, more
introspective, more prone to poetic and philosophical ruminating.
*
* *
In high
school, lots of my Catholic-girl-school classmates were doing drugs. Not me. My
biggest crime, thus far, was chewing gum in the second-floor classrooms, which
was against school rules. I’d gotten caught with contraband cud enough times to earn
some after-school detention and make the rebels think I might be cool. One of these rebels – the daughter of a
wealthy contributor to the school – was a big-wig dealer to students. I once overheard her in the bathroom closing an angel-dust deal with our senior class president. When they discovered
my presence, they were not worried. I might be a nerd, but I wasn’t a nark. No
one in our class was a nark. There could be nothing worse than being a nark. It
was the unspoken rule of our class for both the drug-doers and the drug-abstainers:
We’re in this parochial purgatory together, from the stoners to the jocks to
the scholars. We’ll get outta here relatively unscathed just as long as no one
narks.
Then, during the last semester of
senior year, when we were on the verge of actually escaping our desert island – narklessly
preparing for senior projects, final exams, and graduation -- the history
teacher caught two girls rolling joints and guffawing to I Dream of Jeannie on the small TV in the senior lounge.
The principal, Sister L, was incensed.
She called all of the senior class to a special secret midday assembly. “My
understanding,” she hissed, “is that there have been DRUGS in our school for
quite some time.” Well, yes. That is our understanding too, Sister.
“And none of you bothered to report
this?” Sister was pacing as she spoke, she was so riled. “None of you cared enough about the dangers
that your classmates – your very own friends
-- were in? Why didn’t any of you talk to me or any of the teachers about this
serious issue?”
No one responded. But the first
thing that came to my mind, and perhaps to my classmates’ minds, was “do unto
others as you would have them do unto you.” 1970’s adolescent translation: “Do
not tattle on others as you would not have them tattle on you.”
Our punishment for neglecting to
nark was: forfeited eligibility for the “school spirit” award, which would have won us a Friday off and some mutually agreed-upon outing for the whole class,
paid for by the school. While committing our collective sin of omission, the
seniors had also accumulated the most “spirit points" by volunteering at hospitals and in the
community, having the highest GPA, and being the most involved in extra-curricular
activities such as the yearbook, school newspaper, and basketball team. Our refusal
to nark lost us all our well-earned “spirit” points. In addition, the two joint-rollers
were immediately suspended from school for the rest of the year and banned from
graduation – although they were given their diplomas without having to take
finals.
Thus: the school’s big-wig dealer
was never caught or reported. The middle-class joint-rollers (who probably purchased
their weed from dealer-with-a-rich-dad) got a reprieve from the last two months
of classes and finals and an instant diploma with no marks on their permanent
record.
The moral of this story for our
17-&-18 year old minds:
1. Hell. You
mean all one had to do be absolved from last two excruciating months of classes
and finals – and still earn a prep-school diploma – was get caught rolling joints in the senior lounge?
2. Hell. Even
if one of us had narked earlier, would that just mean that rich daddy’s drug-dealin' daughter would have gotten the same “punishment?”
3. Hell. Maybe
we should ALL have just narked on each other and slept in and partied hearty for
those last two months?
All glibness
aside: Most of us were looking forward to
graduating together and were truly upset that two of our classmates would be
banned from participating or even attending the ceremony as guests. I considered all of it an injustice: to my mind, the joint-rollers were not the main “culprits.” They
were neither pimps nor pushers – they simply happened to get caught with a little weed
likely sold to them by someone whose family made big donations to the school. Would
the dealer have been banned from graduation if she had been caught? Did Sister L know more than she let on? Wasn’t she just making scapegoats and “examples”
out of the less-deeply pocketed girls? I questioned the reasoning behind
kicking them out of school – as if to simply sweep the problem away, push out
all the troubles and “impurities.” During my years at this well-regarded
school, there were girls who got expelled after getting pregnant and deciding
to carry their conceptions to term. There had also been a male science teacher romantically
and (possibly) sexually involved with a student for at least two years. Upon her graduation,
the two married, and the science teacher was quietly fired -- and rehired elsewhere.
(This was my introduction to the Catholic church's sadly frequent way of handling broken
laws, potential scandals, boundary breaches, and sexual misconduct: deny, ignore, minimize, or
ship it all away. Find good scapegoats. Punish some minions. Don’t investigate too deeply; shun responsibility.) Essentially: Don’t nark, even as we preach the necessity of narking. We had learned our lessons well; yes?
(Click here for Part 2) (to be continued as a multiple-part series)
* Bob Denver actually was arrested for marijuana possession in 1998, at age 63. (Before his acting career, he had also graduated from Loyola and taught PE and math at a Catholic grade school in Pacific Palisades, California.)
I
want a bishop with no health insurance who grew up in a place where the earth
is so saturated with toxic waste that they didn't have a choice about getting
leukemia.
I want a bishop who was kicked out of the house at fourteen and I want a bishop
who lost their last lover to breast cancer, who still sees that person every
time they lay down to rest, who held their lover in their arms and knew they
were dying.
I
want a bishop who has stood in line at the clinic, at the DMV, at the welfare
office and has been unemployed and laid off and sexually harassed and
gay-bashed and deported.
I
want a bishop who has spent the night on the street dumpster diving for a meal
and had a cross burned on their lawn and survived rape.
I
want a bishop who has been in love and been hurt, who respects sex, who has
made mistakes and learned from them.
I
want a bishop with bad teeth and an attitude, who has eaten nasty hospital
food, a bishop who cross-dresses and has done drugs and been in therapy.
I
want a bishop who has committed civil disobedience.
And
I want to know why this isn't possible.
I want to know why we started learning somewhere down the line
that a bishop is always a clown: always a john and never a hooker. Always a
boss and never a worker...
--Shared by a "Chaplain Bill" in the comments section of an NCR post, sometime in 2013. Originally seen on a flyer sometime in the 1990s.
