Occasionally I regret my decision to never watch cable news. This is one of those times.
The reporters at the press conference with the Rastafarian Terror Cell in Boston pleaded to be taken seriously as they pelted these two giggling goofballs with questions. Questions that demanded answers for a city-wide panic over several scattered Lite Brites displaying a figure flipping the middle finger, and a TV show about a talking meatball.
Ah, sometimes life in America is so beautifully absurd that it’s all I can do to keep from falling to my knees and weeping with joy.
We are reminded at every turn that the world is a dangerous place, and that every American has got a bullseye directly in the middle of his or her chest. From Mexican crop harvesters and cleaning ladies who are stealing our jobs, to the paranoid sideways glances we give Middle Easterners boarding our planes, to the wicked and tempting trans fats that lie in wait to attack our arteries. Scary monsters lurk everywhere.
If we compare our existence to some of the very real hell-holes that are scattered around our planet, we sound really indulgent and pussified to be so fearful. But we never think of it that way. All we see are grand spectacles of falling towers and heart attacks and we tremble, knowing that it could happen to us.
And so, as those two guys stood before the cameras and reporters, laughing and mocking the absurd and farcical situation they found themselves in, they were chastised for not showing the proper respect to fear.
Now, granted, I’ve never been struck with terror at the sight of a Lite Brite, so perhaps I’m incapable of grasping the enormity of the situation, but I found their reaction brilliant.
It brought me to mind of being in high school, when authority and all it’s ridiculous rules were treated with the disdain and mockery that it deserved. It reminded me of a time in America when laughing in the face of full-on lunacy was permitted. It reminded me of fun.
Can anyone who’s paying the slightest attention actually say they’re having much fun these days?
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, indeed.
Reason Magazine’s excellent summary nails it with a gun.
