It's Not Funny

I have a pretty dark sense of humor.  I have a light one, too, but I can laugh at some dark crap.  I mean, what's the other option?

But I was disturbed yesterday listening to NPR joke about the new internet meme or craze or whatever of putting the UC Davis pepper spray officer in all sorts of iconic art and images.  The hosts were chuckling along as they mentioned that he has been put into Guernica.  Hilarious!  Because what is funnier than putting a police officer who attacked peaceful protestors into one of the seminal anti-war paintings of all time!

I expect Jon Stewart to make fun of this guy.  After all, no one was killed.  I do not want the news doing it.  First of all, you're NPR; stop trying to be hip.  Secondly, there are three aspects to this story about the police crackdown that are important.

First, the crackdown is important in and of itself.  Why now?  Winter's coming.  Why do we need to oust the protestors now?  Why is not OK for people to protest wealth inequality and the lack of prosecution of financial crimes?

Second, when did our peace officers turn into riot-clad storm troopers?  In what possible universe does the UC Davis police need to dress like they are taking on the Baader-Meinhof Gang?  I realize that we were all freaked out over crime in the '90s and some conservatives are freaked out about crime now (even though crimes rates continue to drop in the midst of an employment depression).  But it seems pretty clear from events from Oakland to New York that we've ceded too much latitude to the police to bully the populace.

Third, the untold story, the one I bet you simply will not see on the CBS Evening News, much less Fox and Friends, is the incredible discipline of the protestors.  Middle aged, plump pundits - secure in their six figure incomes and book deals at Regnery - will tsk tsk all the day long about how today's youth just don't measure up.  Whether you're reading Tom Brokaw's Daddy-worship about the World War II generation or David Brooks latest pompous ramblings about how everything went to shit once we stopped lynching coloreds and fastening scarlet letters on women who had sex, the theme is always, "It was better back then, and these kids today are terrible because we score below Finland in second grade math proficiency."

Well, let me tell you something about today's 20 somethings, Tom and David.  They fought a war, a war much longer than World War II.  True, they didn't storm Omaha Beach, but they patrolled the streets of Haditha and drove down roads where every pile of trash by the roadside might explode and maim them.  They proved their mettle.  And every single young person who is patrolling the Korengal Valley volunteered to do it.  You can't even say that about the heroes of Bastogne and Iwo Jima.

And now that they have come home from some seriously messed up wars, they want jobs.  They want a future.  But the financial crimes of the past few years have diminished everyone's future, or at least everyone who isn't in the 1%.  For those that didn't serve, they were told that the way to get ahead was to go to college, so they worked hard, went to college and now can't find work, despite having crushing mountains of debt.

There's your story, NPR.  Not some snarky piece about the UC Davis cop spraying Edvard Munch's "The Scream".  The story is that we are systematically robbing our young people of their future.

And they are standing up for their future with a discipline and a resolve that would impress King and Gandhi.  It really would.

I don't know if the blindness comes from class or from age differences, but the story of the year is not the stupid Super Congress or the Debt Ceiling.  It's about young people from Tahir Square to Zuccotti Park standing up for a future that they can believe in.

UPDATE:  OK.

I admit.

This is funny: