10-19-01, Danny McBride, 905 words

Bang!  Zoom!  To the moon, Alice!  One of these days- -Pow! Right in the kisser!! Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden used to tell his long-suffering wife Alice- -played by Audrey Meadows- -that he was going to let her have it.   Near domestic violence as humor. Not as funny today, perhaps, but then we knew Ralph could never actually follow through on this- -or anything else, for that matter.  Besides, we knew Alice always got the better of him. (Today that probably would be Al Iss, and she’d have to wear a total body cover.)

Now it’s Pow!  Zoom!  Right in your home town- -if your home is with the Taliban.  (By the way- -Is that name from square dancing, as in Taliban left and Do Si Do?)

Once again a spokesman in Islamabad has appeared on television here to defend the righteousness of the Taliban ways.  He went on about how they were going to do us in.  “We will bury you.” No, wait, that was Krushchev.  “We will defeat you and never be taken alive.”  No, let’s see, Milosevic said something like that, brandishing a pistol, just before he caved.  Caved?  Isn’t that how most of the Taliban’s followers are housed?

For better or worse I’m old enough to remember a lot of the people who made these boasts in the past century.  Of course Hitler predicted his own victory.  The North Koreans expected to take over the whole peninsula.  The Six Day War was supposed to wipe out Israel.  Of course, it got called the “Six Day War” because that’s all it took for Israel to beat the pants off the Syrians and Egyptians and their allied forces.  And we’ve had Khaddafi and Khomeini; Manuel Noriega (resident of Florida) and Idi Amin (resident of Mecca); Castro and Baby Doc Duvalier; Lebanese insurgents tearing up Beirut; War Lords in Somalia; and my personal favorite, Saddam Hussein.  A few thugs in the Afghan mountains expect to succeed where all these guys failed?  Oh scare me!  Boogie Boogie Boogie.  Yes I know, they have cells planted in some 60 or so countries ready to come alive like Manchurian Candidates when the proper code words are spoken.  Yeah, well here they are: “Invasion Of The Body Snatchers”.  Seen it.  Know how it ends.  If these guys ever went to a movie they’d know too.

I have a neighbor whose way of life I don’t much care for.  He sings badly- -very badly- -at the top of his lungs during hours when civilized people are sleeping.  Granted, he’s in his own house with all the doors and windows closed, but I can still hear him.  It would seem as though he has ordered the Time-Life collection of the “Worst Hits Of The Sixties And Seventies”,  turned off his stereo speakers and cranked up the headphones.  All I can hear is him.  “Knock three times on the ceiling if you want me…”  So I put on my own stereo and enjoy a little Delbert McClinton and I can no longer hear him.  Only Delbert.

Now if I were to take a more hard line position, I could bomb his house and unleash a torrent of anthrax spores mailed anonymously.  But what’s the sense of that?  It would just make him angry, and basically all he’s doing is yowling and scaring the neighborhood pets.  If these Talibandits had television, they would have been able to hear Rodney King plead “Can’t we all just get along?”  Apparently not.

So here’s the deal:  You don’t like our lifestyle?  Tough bananas.  We don’t much care for yours either.  But up until recently we’ve been willing to let you go your own way and destroy centuries old artwork and statuary because it depicted Buddha even though he predates Mohammed by several hundred years.  We’ve stood by and let you treat your women like dirt.  And we’ve said close to nothing about your wacky-fanaticky version of Islam that most of the civilized Muslim world finds anathema.  But you have pushed the line just far enough to activate the John Wayne in every one of us.  Sky marshals?  There are already about a hundred now on every flight.  One queer move and every able-bodied passenger is ready to disregard the seat belt sign and pummel whomever disturbs the peace.  It’s already happened.

Bioterrorism?  You don’t have enough change for postage before you’re breathing your own sneezing powder.  Get over yourself.

A news report by the Taliban said two hundred people had been killed in recent bombings in Kandahar, Afghanistan.  I’m sorry.  We used to be sympathetic to this kind of thing, but now all we can say is “So, I guess we have another five-thousand, eight-hundred and some-odd to go.  Who’ll be next?  Step right up and see Allah and the Seventy-Two Virgins.”  Sounds like a Vegas chorus line show.  Everybody sing: “Allah be down to get you in a taxi, honey…”

This is going to take a while and we are already getting the mixed messages of watching out for strangers in crop dusters while continuing our lives by going to ball games, The Mall Of America and Disneyland.  We haven’t had a war on our own soil in about a hundred and forty years.  If you think we’ve forgotten how, you’re yowling the wrong Time-Life “Hit”.  Sorry, but you asked for it.

To the moon.  Pow!  Zoom!  Right in the kisser!!

-30-

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