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| D'em's Fighting Words! |
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| yeah? your point? what's your point? |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, January 23, 2008. I’ve been to jail. I know what it is like to me herded into a hall, legs chained, wrists tied, and made to waddle into court, because no gait of dignity is available to you. In the elevator, you’re told to turn and face the rear wall. Generally, just as you walk into court and the public view, your jail pants – white or orange – begin to sag down. I once had to ask my public defender to pull my pants up as I stood to face the judge. Altogether, an ego deflating period. And you actually look forward to returning to your cell. Not to push the comparison too heavily, I think I have some insight to the frustrations and derangement that might occur to zoo animals. Because I periodically saw that given the right circumstances, an otherwise rule-obeying prisoner on a short sentence might make a break for it through the numerous incompetencies of the jailers when the risk in no way was equaled by the benefit, even in the unlikely event the action was successful. I worked in the kitchen at the Boulder jail, and as far as I could tell, I could exit through the back door, often unlocked and sometimes propped open as deliveries and garbage were transferred. I assumed back then there were cameras or guards, but I didn’t see any and a car could have zooted by to pick me up quick before the authorities were alerted. Or, so in 1994. I’ll bet people at some point tried it. I know at least one person considered it, however briefly, however painfully stupid. I also know that certain combinations of indignities, self inflicted or not, can precipitate a violent incident if unaddressed or allowed to continue. The day after Christmas this year, a four year old Siberian tiger at the San Francisco zoo jumped its cage and killed one person and came close to killing two others before being shot dead herself. Under questioning, a survivor said the three men had been drinking. Which of course shocked everyone. Who’d have thought alcohol would be involved? Even more hilarious, they had slingshots, and had taunted the animal. Which is to say, three drunks loudly hanging on a cage bar were hitting a tiger with items fired by slingshot. Emotionally inspired, the animal lept the fence, which was improperly low, and brought justice to these lesser creatures. I could not restrain myself from saying “Good!” when I heard. I’m not given to Disneyesque considerations of wild animals, but it made me smile to imagine the horror and fear of the drunken fools confronted with what must be a primeval human nightmare: effectively unarmed before a seriously annoyed big cat that had every right in nature to go after them. Confronted in their mental caves by a Smilodon. I sometimes feel very similar emotions when some drunken blowhard at an athletic event, screaming obscenities at a player from imagined safety in the bleachers, and throwing batteries or bottles or cans at them, is presented with the thrilling prospect of the object of their venom - a 250 pound mesomorph - vaulting into the stands or over the left field wall, grabbing the gibbering idiot by the throat, and explaining life in the fast lane to them. This is most satisfying on television. They go limp and cower, and their eyes are the very definition of terror, as should be expected. Sometimes the athlete pummels them seriously, and yet my eyes do not well, my throat does not constrict. Nature’s way. If I could afford it, I’d have paid some of their enormous fines for the satisfaction it gave me. It’s not just in athletics and zoos. We feel safe in the protection of radio and the internet to make obscene and baseless accusations for our own sense of worth and to validate some ancient prejudices of our own. Who wouldn’t enjoy seeing some insulted individual knocking Limbaugh or O’Reilly or Hannity or Dr. Laura in the teeth? Not a few feel the same way about Michael Moore. To answer the unasked, ‘yes,’ I’m familiar with the term ‘irony.’ Many jurisdictions, and Boulder is one of them, have a law that allows otherwise discouraged actions in response to ‘fighting words.’ Fighting words are written or spoken, expressed to incite hatred or violence and which endangers those to whom they refer. Their use can precipitate violence that might be construed as justified. Ironically, they have more support in law to support physical retaliation than protects a caged tiger under physical assault, or a millionaire athlete forced to listen to remarks about his wife both by law and contract to his league. I’ve been very surprised that fighting words have not found their way into the preambles of law suits contesting what people post anonymously in public Blogs. I’d bet it won’t be long, and people who slander under clever User ID’s might soon provide a graphic image of terror just as satisfying as I imagine a justifiably incensed tiger instilled at the San Francisco Zoo last month. |
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