Newsflash: We got this fucking crazy white bitch down in Florida calling the FBI over a conversation some Arabs were having over an omelet. They closed down the fucking highway and brought bomb robots (ROBOTS!) out to blow up some suitcases. So instead of turning around and asking these Arab men what they just said because she thinks she heard them say they're going to blow something up, she calls up the FBI and they spend all day and god knows how many thousands of dollars of taxpayers' money to have them find out that, oops! It was JUST A JOKE! These guys were fucking with this dumb bitch because they were likely being sweated by everybody in the diner. For Christsakes! I would have been messing with these stupid fucks too! And at the impromptu press conference held out on the highway the surly Florida sheriff made sure to mention that these men ran a tollbooth (oh my god!) and they were "uncooperative," that they had bad attitudes and initially (until they had a gun pointed at their heads I suspect) they refused to allow a search of their vehicle. And (god help us) the fucking media gobbled it all up hook line and sinker and recycled these bits of periphery information until it was in every news report in the world. There are so many elements of this story, even in just the little bit I've laid out so far, that need explaining. But just to prime you a little bit, my overarching point here is THIS FUCKING COUNTRY IS GOING CRAZY ... First I'd like to take aim at this woman who called the cops in the first place.

Eunice Stone overheard three Arab men making jokes and "alarming" comments about 9/11. Poor Eunice, I do not envy her position. Being called to duty as an American citizen to act vigilantly and make the judgement call that could mean the difference between, potentially, life and death. I would have been alarmed too. Here, however, with all the bright lights of the 9/11 anniversary still blinding us, we absolutely must take stock of how normal human beings act, both to judge our own actions and those of our fellow humans. These were obviously Arab men, they were eating breakfast, they were surrounded by other customers, who were all eating breakfast too. This is a strange time for Arabs in this country and I'm sure the temptation to scream is overwhelming for some of them because they get scrutinized everywhere they go these days and if it isn't the fucking police or the FBI staring at them, it's a bunch of do-good heartland fools who have no idea what they're looking at. And I can relate to them for making jokes. So, they made a few jokes, they had a little fun scaring the natives, so what? Well, I'll tell you what, this was not a good idea. They had no idea what they were getting themselves into. These men acted stupidly by underestimating the freakish ignorance of the average American, at this moment in time. There are several tell tale signs I can easily peg that these men were not serious, never even having heard what they said. First, did it ever occur to Miss Stone that Islamic terrorists planning an attack on America, especially right now, might not come to fucking Denny's to talk logistics? Did she ever consider that they might do it at home? My god, I feel I am stooping to a level of thought too rudimentary for words here. Secondly, if these guys were terrorists, and they were daft enough to casually sit around talking Jihad during the morning rush at a bible belt Denny's, don't you think they might speak their native language? I wonder if Miss Stone realizes there is another language besides English? Did the thought ever cross Miss Stone's pea-brain that these guys might not want anybody to know about their terrorist plot until, say, WHEN THEY CARRIED IT OUT? There is something very wrong about the way this woman reacted. I know we've been fed all the information about the sneaky 'sleeper' cells hiding away in regular old America, assimilating, wearing golf shirts and walking the fucking dog or whatever 'regular' Americans do, but I can assure you that they want to keep their Jihad activities on the Q-T, I mean, after all, they're giving up the luxury of living in the land of the righteous brothers for years in order to slum it out with the godforsaken infidels in the belly of the beast just so they can become martyrs, I'm sure they don't want to fuck it up. But these things obviously did not occur to Miss Stone before she flipped out and called the police. Shame on her. And I'm not saying she should have just shuffled it off as a joke and left it at that either. What she should have done is treat them like the juvenile jokesters they were and asked them very seriously what the hell they were talking about. I bet they would have explained and apologized. She should have said she heard them talking disrespectfully about something very sensitive to her and that she didn't want to hear it. Also she could have mentioned to them that, for their own sakes, they had better keep their traps shut in the future because not everybody would be so kind as to assume they were joking about it. Unfortunately these three guys happened to run into Miss Stone before they were warned, but they should have known. Shame on them too. I suppose Miss Stone may have suspected that these men were joking from the very beginning and just really wanted to teach them a lesson. I'm probably giving her too much credit now. But, frankly, I can relate more with these three Arab men than I can with this woman (I can practically hear John Ashcroft's footsteps behind me already).

Next time I'll take up the dumb fucking cops who didn't take these factors into consideration either, and the dumb fucking media who has pushed their common sense so far up their fat asses that they've practically become a PR machine for the dumb fucking administration.

Oh yes, I forgot. Here is Miss Bess' website: www.citywriters.com/chalance. (I swear I will learn to make links soon so you can just click on the damn thing) Check it out, you might learn something.

So this morning on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show they had a little five-minute debate concerning the possibility that Conservatives have a better sense of humor than Liberals. And, in a way, this goes straight to the heart of my anti-hipster argument. Or maybe more like the liver or spleen. So, Brian Lehrer, in his unnervingly calm and probing voice had the editor of the L.A. Weekly on the phone. The editor had been comparing recent issues of The Nation and its Conservative counterpart, the Weekly Standard, and finally ('against his good judgement' as Brian put it) he came to the conclusion that reading the Nation was like forcing a box of dry musilix down your throat, whereas reading the Standard was, well, better. They didn't offer any analogy here but I'm guessing it's something like eating an Egg McMuffin or taking a bong hit or something. And to my surprise, most people who called the show actually agreed with the guy. The quick explanation they came to was that the Left has lost its sense of humor because they're too worried about offending people. They're too 'PC.' That's true. Also, I would add, because the Old Guard's all got heartburn from too much Southern Comfort back in the day and they look back at their politically 'significant' youth with rose colored granny specs and they would not dare to make a joke out of the great work they did. This is not hard to understand, fuck, look at Oliver Stone, look at the Village Voice. I don't want people making a joke out of shit that I hold dear either. Anyway, my point is this: All of these crusty, curly old hippies had children and moved to the suburbs, got hemorrhoids and mortgages, and all of their children grew up, got drunk, nabbed the checkbook and moved to Williamsburg. I'm trying to make a point, but it's unraveling slowly here. Bear with me.

Let us agree on one thing: Young Liberals walk around like they have a load of shit in their pants, and if you've ever had a load of shit in your pants you know what I'm saying: Your mind strays no farther than your own ass.

Let us agree on another timeless premise: Parents are good at setting examples of behavior but they are generally very bad at explaining these examples.

Now then, all the Old Liberals have lost their sense of humor, and this humorless sacred cow attitude translated onto their children, who adopted and emulated it. (I know it's counterintuitive to think that kids would like to imitate their folks, I generally think of each generation as growing up to rebel against its forebears, but in this case I believe it simply because the sixties was probably pretty cool, what with all the music and fashion and attitude, and of course, who doesn't like drugs?) And whereas their parents may realize they they've lost their sense of humor, and perhaps could even extract some wisdom from it, tucked away in their burned brains somewhere, their children are not equipped with the tools to do this, because they never experienced the things their parents did, the things that inspired their parents to burn their bras and fuck like rabbits, the forces too that eventually crushed their parent's ideals into a model home in lazy acres. The children are awash in a sea of protest posters and tofu and irony and do not have a lifeboat. All they have is the face of compassion, their posturing, which they took from their folks. They cannot escape the sacred cow attitude even though they don't know exactly why they have it or where it came from. They are humorless beyond the point of return. So they scramble to find something of authenticity, something with meaning. This is where we find vintage clothing piled to the sky, this is why hipsters wear gas station attendant uniforms and trucker hats, this is why hipsters dress like construction workers and soldiers and why they wear archaic horn-rimmed glasses and nerdy librarian shawls, this is bobby socks and cigarettes, this is poodle skirts, this is the beat-up cowboy hat, this is (recycling, it's true, and I do like the glasses, I think they're quite sexy sometimes) But this is also the young hipster, spawn of the old hippy, cut off from experience that it so wants to find, nowhere in time, trying to 'strike a vein' : driving to the levee, when the levee, alas, is dry.

It's true, there is no Truth, there are no great causes anymore, no great battles ahead, no rallying wars, no expatriated soldiers, no romance, no wounds, there is 'no fucking fun,' as Sid Vicious once said it. (Unfortunately, but very apparently too, there is no imagination either. For Fuck's sake, we've been post modern and meaningless since the end of WWII and at least the fucking hippies could come up with something relatively new looking to rally behind, all the hipsters do is fucking imitate.) So the hipsters try to find authenticity the easy way, the way they've gotten everything in their stinking little lives, by walking the walk. Sucking the teat of authenticity like the beginning with their parents. Dress in an old shirt, you become old and informed, dress like a writer, you become that writer, dress like a Rastaman (and this one is really difficult to swallow) you, your white-Ohio-oatmeal-eating-cracker-ass, becomes that Rastaman. And I think we begin to approach the absurd now. And let me remind you that the absurd is not necessarily funny. It could be, in fact I think it damn well should be, and that's what this whole loss-of-humor discussion is about, but try telling that to the dude in the Ralph Lauren dress shirt and polished creepers and horn-rimmed glasses and the manicured sideburns (gag) slumming it for change with his $10,000 Tuba down in the Bedford stop on the L train. If you don't believe me, go up to him and say this: "Hey asshole! Why are you here?" You know what he'll say? "Physics!" Meanwhile we see another man digging through the garbage looking for empty bottles.

See, the hipsters have lost all context of reality. And this is dicey territory, I agree, because I like listening to 'music' in the Subway too, hell, I like looking at a fucking tuba, I like Carhart pants, I'm not an outspoken advocate for the poor and the homeless, I like 'bohemia,' but at some point, I think we must all come to grips and realize that this stuff is no more REAL than the name 'Bob' embroidered on the 1967 pep-boys button-up shirt purchased by an Oberlin fine arts graduate named Dave who's never changed a car's oil in his life. But here I am again, preaching to the choir.

Wrapping up here (I know you all have a place to be), I think we can trace the loss of humor of the Old Left to the repulsive absurdity of the New York City "Hipster," fashionably speaking, of course. But then, what else is there? Da-ha-ha-ha-ha!

ON A LIGHTER NOTE: I got my first piece of fan mail today! Hooray! A girl named Bess who lives in Greenpoint ("mecca of all things Urbn Hpstr") By the way, I like the vowel omission, very cute. She relates, or at least says she relates, with my anti-hipster mission. Thanks Bess, you're the Bess-t! It's good to know there's somebody above ground who relates with me. And I must toot my own horn very blatantly here by quoting from Bess' letter: "Your writing is highly, highly entertaining."
QUESTIONS, COMMENTS? EMAIL ME, BITCHES! (we're cultiviating the sense of humor here, you see?)