In this superheated, paranoid, class-warring world, I am sure that the title of this piece raised expectations in many of your overwrought minds of yet another attack on one of the Teabgging right wing/Christian Militia/Catholic Church pedophile/Sarah Palin holier-than-thou (“But I will burn witches if elected!”) crews that populate the far right edges of our media-delineated universe.
But it is not.
It is about a simple working class man who performed an heroic act today and saved three lives.
I ran into his story on my semi-nightly “Click through the local NYC 11PM news shows as fast as possible to see if there is anything happening on the streets that I should take into account when I go out of the door tomorrow” run through the corporate media hell that we laughingly call “TV.”
Read on.
Eddie Clas looks like he is a working class, 40-ish man who lives in a working class, ’40s-ish neighborhood in the NYC outer borough of Queens. That’s what I saw as I clicked into the story in full flight from some piece of shit news or garbage advertising on one of the other local channels. Medium height, old plaid shirt, needs a shave, maybe a little on the heavy side…looks like a quiet beer or two every night to me but it might just be McDonald’s or a wife who cooks pretty well. Whatever. You’ve seen him a million times. Maybe on an ad for the lottery or working in your local auto repair shop. Mr. Everyman, USA version thereof.
But what stopped my clicking dead in its tracks were two sentences that I heard him say and the sheer honesty with which he said them.
Interviewer: “Do you feel lke a hero for doing what you did?”
Mr. Clas: “No, I’m a Christian. That’s what Christians do.”
And what did he do?
He rescued two young children and a grandmother…three separate trips into an old, fiercely burning wooden frame building…from certain death in a blaze that consumed two houses in the space of about four minutes flat is what he did.
And all he had to say was “No, I’m a Christian. That’s what Christians do.”
I cried a little.
He could have been one of the original Christians, “doing what they do,” following the directives of the prophet Jesus Christ.
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Like dat.
He speaks Spanish (Read the linked article.), but his English is uninflected by anything other than a regular NYC/Queens/working class dialect so I’m guessing that he was born here of immigrant parents.
He is not a bomb-throwing Muslim terrorist.
He is not a gun-carrying Hispanic gangbanger or a Christian soldier for the Capitalist Christ or an upward-striving, yupped-out supercollege grad.
He is not any of these things.
He’s just a just a working guy who when asked why he did what he did, answered:
If God forbid it was my house burning, my kids were inside, I hope someone would come and save my kids. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the way my mother raised me.
Yup.
The real America, alive and well in Queens.
It’s the right thing to do. It’s the way my mother raised me.
Yup.
Like dat.
Just sayin’…
When we all begin to wonder “Why am I still trying? In the face of the Madoffs and the Cheneys, the Paris Hiltons and the Snoop Dogs, the Larry Kings, the Katie Courics and all the rest of the talking puppetheads who bring us the official reailty, amid the maelstrom of credit card ads, insurance scams and Big Pharma drug efficacy lies, why do I still give a shit?” the answer lies in the history of Americans like Eddie Clas.
Too big to fail?
No.
Too damned good to fail.
Still.
Bet on it.
I am.
Later…
AG
