ADVENTURES IN IRONY
By DR WES BROWNING

In order to prepare for what columnification I do here, I read far too much news and save bits and pieces on scraps of paper and electronica. One of those bits: Panels with wires sticking out of them depicting a cartoon character making the gesture popularly known as “the bird” sparked panic in Boston, resulted in charges against two men who distributed them, and may lead to further charges against the company that put them up to it.

Some people around here have tried to make out like Seattle is way cooler than Boston in this regard. After all, we got paneled too, at the same time, by the same broadcasting company, and we didn’t go bat-spit freaking Stupid and arrest people and turn on the sirens and redden our terror alert signs.

Upon closer inspection, however, Seattle is not that much different from Boston, just out of temporal synch with it. This is the city that in 1996 arrested and tried Jason Sprinkle, a.k.a. Subculture Joe, for inducing bat-spit freaking Stupidity and a rush-hour traffic nightmare as nine city blocks were cordoned off to protect us all from a truck with the words “Timberlake Carpentry Rules (The Bomb!)” painted on it. So we were the Boston in 1996. Maybe in 2015 Boston will be the Seattle.

The truth is, Americans everywhere are fully as capable of becoming as bat-spit freaking Stupid as any crazed mob in any movie filled with stereotypic foreign babbling crazed mobs you’ve ever seen. That’s the whole reason we’re at war with Iraq right now. We Americans panicked when somebody actually attacked us, so as a nation we went bat-spit freaking Stupid and attacked somebody else who had nothing to do with it, and we’re still so Stupid we’re still doing it, and court-martialing people for trying to save us from doing it.

I was further reminded of what nutcases we are capable of being when I learned that it was necessary for a three judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to ascertain that it is not OK to arrest a man for using the word “goddamn” at a town board meeting, like happened a while back in Montrose, Michigan. Later, it may be necessary for the Supreme Court to reiterate that fact, because Montrose may appeal.

Again, don’t congratulate yourself that Montrose is the Stupid this time. When you’ve got the pox, you’ve got the pox. You don’t say, “Oh, I don’t have the pox, it’s just my elbow that has it.” If your elbow has the pox, you’ve got the pox.

Just because Stupidity breaks out in random places, doesn’t mean it isn’t always everywhere. It’s in all of our blood. You could be the Stupid next. Or the Stupid could be your own mayor or your own police chief.

You could be like the New York dealer of overpriced antiques who is suing four homeless guys for more than a million dollars. He says he knows he isn’t going to get the money. He says he’s suing for the money “for legal reasons.” Yeah, and I’m laughing at him for psychiatric reasons.

Sometimes that’s all you can do.

In the early ’80s, a writer for The New York Times was reporting on a New Mexico celebration that she said was some sort of “community chicken-killing festival.” She also referred to it as a “gang pluck.” Not only did The New York Times fire her for writing like that (even though it’s been reported she was originally hired for the purpose of livening up their prose!), but when the woman died this week they couldn’t bring themselves to quote the “gang pluck” line in her obituary.

Being fired by The New York Times might have been a crushing blow for some writers, but Molly Ivins apparently just laughed out the door and kept laughing all the way out death’s door, too.

We all need to remember how she managed to pull that off. It would give us hope.