I was reading some news articles this morning and felt compelled to write something. I know nobody gives a shit and I don't expect them to, but I have no better place to put this drivel and I didn't want to pass up an opportunity to use such a catchy title. So here it goes. Dear failed airplane bomber kid, I would like to thank you. Not for attempting to blow up an airplane but for putting a human face on the "terrorist" moniker. In reality, you only succeeded in setting your nuts on fire in coach. On the terrorist grade scale that should earn you an F, or an incomplete at the very least. But I still applaud you. You see, if you were Middle Eastern there likely would have been a public outcry to drop shitloads of bombs on schools and hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan in retaliation. But you are a 23-year old from Nigeria, a Muslim dude from Africa to be specific. And, since Americans don't know that you can be both African and Muslim, there wasn't much anti-Islamic hysteria whipped up in the wake of your ball-roast on the descent to Wayne County Airport. You also earned a mechanical engineering degree from University College London, which alone annihilates the Arab-Muslim, "they hate us for our freedom" stereotype, but I'm going to assume nobody caught that last tidbit since we all had to gorge ourselves on the Earth-shattering news that Tiger Woods will stick his club in anything with two legs and a pulse.
Which brings me to the big picture, the thing I've been waiting to bitch about for at least three days now. And that is the fact that we need events like botched plane bombings by baby-faced Nigerians to remind us that human beings, even ones that want to light our balls on fire, are still human beings. The manufactured hysteria over the Tiger Woods incident was so over-the-top it should have been broadcast as a deleted scene from Crank 3. And what did we learn from it? That Tiger Woods has a dick and he likes to use it. Big. Fucking. Deal. And as swiftly as the story emerged Tiger fell from grace and has been relegated to suffer his existence in the realm of humanity with the rest of us. Another fallen hero drowning in the American cesspool of celebrity worship. No longer a golf legend strolling through Torrey Pines in my living room in 1080i, he is now subject to scrutiny under the flimsy moral standards we use to judge our neighbors.
Our culture of infotainment may be the most dangerous institution we face as a nation. Though it sounds hyperbolic, nothing succeeds at simultaneously distracting us and perpetuating indifference to the problems we face in reality more so than the rampant celebrity worship that oozes in HD from our flat-screens and adorns the checkout lines at our grocery stores. TMZ and People Magazine symbolize our callous penchant towards the dehumanization of anyone who is "not like us."
On one end of the spectrum are celebrities who have been dehumanized through their construction as uber-human models of perfection. They have been reduced to images in movies and magazines upon which we cast our adulation, jealousy, and judgment from the comfort of our own homes. They have been made into "things" for us to consume and discard. On the other end we have the somewhat more unpleasant version of dehumanization. The kind that allows the powers of our country to wantonly destroy over a million Iraqi souls while suffering nothing more than a stale belch of dissent. But why should we care, if they are not as human as us? On the News, the same corporate-run jack-offs that brought us the Tiger Woods scandal, we see images of Middle-Eastern men (doesn't matter what country they are from since they are all equally "not like us") yelling jibberish we can't understand, burning American flags and wearing silly clothes. If that is the extent of our national understanding of the Middle East then it is no surprise that Brittany Murphy's death, as tragic as it may be, trumps the deaths of more than one million Iraqis. We may, as a nation, share complicity in each.
In closing, I would once again like to thank Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab for lighting his balls on fire over the city of Detroit. I'm sure the security corporations that manufacture body scanners would also like to thank him but a PR firm probably poo-poo'd the idea of a public display of gratitude. Had Umar not been neutralized and dragged to First Class, where he assuredly did not get a window seat, he could have overlooked a city that once epitomized the ideal of the American worker, a city that now suffers from chronic neglect and abandonment. An industrialized ghost town laying waste to the distorted vision of the American Dream. When Umar's plane touched down on the Wayne County tarmac Tiger Woods' infidelities were likely unfolding on television screens throughout the terminal. And once the press found out about Umar's existence, the stampede of talking heads, sound guys and camera crews inevitably trumpeted past the seemingly endless strips of sports bars and baggage claims, not to unearth the clandestine underpinnings of a terrorist plot or examine the root causes of international terrorism, but to sketch a caricature of a young Nigerian man who set his balls on fire over Detroit.
Very interesting read. I think you might want to look at Kenneth Burke's notion of the other.
ReplyDeleteFirst official follower!!
ReplyDeleteWhere's my T-shirt?
Dave, I looked up Kenneth Burke and thought he had an interesting perspective on rhetoric. I'll definitely have to check out more of his work.
ReplyDeleteSeth, after ignoring your advice for months I finally did it. Thanks for the encouragement. First T-shirt and beer koozie are yours, my friend.