...To the beige-mobile, chums!

Monday, March 29

**** A CHANCE TO WORK HARD FOR ALMOST NO PAY! We are moving on Sunday, March 28 at noon. Help us or beware the consequences. We will bring a beer.

WHY YELL AT THE SERVICE PERSONNEL? As I read the paper at the Someday Cafe this afternoon a man walked to the counter and made numerous irate comments to the woman behind the counter about a stenciled graffiti tag on the pillar outside of the main entrance. The tag shows President Bush's head with a rifle cross-hair aimed at his forehead and the single word VOTE beneath. The man said that he "was outraged" by the tag and that he wanted the woman behind the counter to tell "the president of this company" to remove it or he would do it himself, as well as "handing him his teeth" if "the president" had "any problem with it". The irate man also said that he served six months in Iraq last year and that he was "sick of you people", by which I assume he meant anyone in the shop. What can I learn from this situation....?

  • I'm not really quick to defend a 5'-4" woman who is being yelled at by a 6-foot US soldier.
  • I don't think the tag was offensive, but I didn't think that it advocated assasinating the president of the United States, either. I took it to mean that opponents of George W. Bush were "taking aim" with the intention of removing him from office through the electoral process. Hence, the "VOTE" label. Maybe it is threatening. I thought later on that the workers at the Someday should take a Sharpie to the tag, altering it so the cross-hairs looked like a "Nope" symbol over Bush's head. Perhaps that sends a different, more accurate message but I didn't place the tag, so I'm just adding my own thoughts here.
  • She was just serving coffee drinks! Ease up grumpy!
  • Is this an actual example of one person's art being another's profanity? Would Rudoplh Guiliani condemn it like he condemned the artwork of Chris Ofili? Would the Israeli ambassador to Sweden destroy it?
  • What, exactly, has President Bush done that angers me? The media harp on WMDs and Haliburton war profiteering, and those are valid reasons. The problem is that they don't really impact me here, in Massachusetts. What does impact me is poverty among school-age children, poor health care for American workers and their families, the lack of affordable housing, outsourcing of jobs to remote locations, and the kinds of government decisions that hurt my family, friends, and neighbors. Why spend $87 billion in Iraq if we have so many sick, malnourished, and struggling Americans at home? Why not attend to our educational institutions and our health care? What's so great about our American system that compells President Bush to force it onto others? Where is the equality for all and malice toward none? Why not wait until we start doing some things right domestically? I refuse to say that President Clinton and the Democratic party are without blame on this issue. The stock market growth from 1992 to 2000 was phenomenal, but the rich got richer and the poor got poorer from all the census numbers I've seen. What happened to a "New Deal" for the American people and all that stuff, Democrats? I did a quick calculation and I saw that median income for black Americans rose 28% in the period from 1992 to 200, but median income for white Americans rose only 22% in that time. This seems like the beginnings of a push toward equality, and it might be, but consider also that the actual value of the median black American's income in 2000 was $40,912 and that of the average white American was $63,759. That is a gap of almost $23,000... If you worked at Wal-Mart full-time (unlikely) for the minimum wage ($5.15 nationally) for all 52 weeks in a year you would GROSS only $10,712. You wouldn't earn the difference between white and black with another full-time job! Wow! Let's bomb another country! Maybe that will distract people from the problems in their lives... then again, maybe it won't.
  • The guy drove away in an oil truck. Numerous comments from the peanut gallery in the cafe. Is the oil truck/defending President Bush juxtaposition ironic? I was never good at understanding those subtle AP English concepts.
  • How can I have a conversation with this angry guy? Do I thank him for his service to our country? I do profess to like people with strong feelings on issues. I'll bet we have some similar ideas about things. We might never know because I have a hard time thinking when someone's yelling at me... and at little female coffee slingers.

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