Terry Jones? Maybe Barack Obama should take a page from his act.
Think about it.
Did he take part in actions that caused any deaths?
No. Not even close.
Did he buckle when pressed by his enemies?
No. He stood up to the media pressure amazingly well considering his lack of experience in that field, and he stood his ground. None of that “across the aisle” shit. He had a point to make and he damned well made it. At the risk of his own mortal ass, I might add. He wasn’t carrying that .40 caliber pistol to shoot any Muslims who might be walking down the street on the way to the grocery store; he was righteously afraid for his own life and ready to defend himself.
Did he publicly prevaricate while trying to make backroom deals with forces that he knows damned well to be regressive?
Nope.
Did he even burn any Qurans?
No. The Quran burning thing was, in the end, a feint. A feint to get some attention? Yes, I believe so. To get personal attention? I doubt it. Why now? He has spent his whole life outside of the mainstream. He has not hustled his beliefs. On the contrary, he has stayed way below the radar. Now…you may not agree with his beliefs, but just as the chorus of big-time political hustlers sang, outraged over his stance…”RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE!!! RELIGIOUS TOLERANCE!!!…y’gotta give him his own religious freedom.
And his freedom of speech as well.
If you weighed the human suffering that Terry Jones has caused in his life…if any…and then compared it to the weight of spilled blood caused by the people who most loudly condemned him, the Rev. Jones would be on the side of the angels and most of his opponents would be headed for the deepest circles of Danté’s Inferno.
Bet on it.
Just sayin’…
When the mass media’s red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin’ into town and then comes down that hard on anybody…a mass media that gave BushCo an almost eight year pass to lie, murder and steal, just for starters…the warning flags should jump straight up in the air.
I happen to agree with the basic point of Jones’ argument. There is a fundamentalist group of Muslims who are trying to bring down this nation and the west in general and replace it in the world with a strict Islamist approach to life. I oppose that idea, just as I oppose Christian Talibans, Communist Talibans, Fascist Talibans, Capitalist Talibans and any other group that is willing to harm other human beings in order to impose their will and world view upon them.
I also agree with the way that he presented it.
No kidnappings of hiking Muslims.
No sending in of covert hit teams, no renditions, no Abu Ghraibs, no drones, no suicide bombings.
No nothing, in the end.
Nothing except media time in which to express his position.
Lots of media time.
Now that position and his own position in the culture…white Anglo/Celtic, working class southern, not particularly well educated in the Ivy League manner…enabled the media to cast him as a dumb redneck. But as anyone with an open mind who watched his many, many interviews with some of the strongest mass media hustlers in the business should have seen…he is no dummy. No coward, either. He calmly continued to make his point with no apparent rancor, and he did so over and over and over again in the face of totally pre-prejudiced questioning from interviewer after interviewer who wanted to make him look the fool. His sentences rolled out quite clearly; the grammar was correct and easy to understand; the presentation of his ideas was clear and well mannered…he even showed flashes of real humor. He was not hostile to his questioners in the Rush Limbaugh/Bill O’Reilly manner nor was he ever even remotely MSNBC-style snarky. He just said his piece in perfectly clear English sentences.
Let’s hear that from John Boehner or Sarah Palin under pressure.
Naaaaahhhhh…
The interviewers did not succeed in making him look stupid. Except of course in the minds of the millions of hypnomedia addicts who swallow the media hype hook, line and sinker anyway.
He stood up to the pressure. He didn’t back down; he didn’t lash out, he stood right in there and had his say. The only indication of nerves?
His hands.
I don’t know how big he is but he looks to be maybe 6 feet tall and around 180 pounds on screen.
A wiry (and still strong at almost 60 years of age) middleweight/super middleweight/light-heavyweight.
Except for his hands.
His hands were alive!!! Big and powerful as well.
Whether he was gesturing with them or had them clasped in front of him while he was being interviewed, they seemed to have a life of their own, the fingers twining and intertwining around themselves like a basket of barely controllable snakes. They wanted to take the interviewers by the throat and shake the truth into them. And out of them as well.
But he never once surrendered to that anger.
There are many members of my own working class Anglo/Celtic family who resemble Terry Jones both physically and psychologically as well. Me too, I guess. I understand the man, and I understand the steely control that he showed under pressure during his week in the media free fire zone. We too tend to turn the other cheek a few times as Rev. Jones suggested in many of his interviews. And we too eventually plant our feet and say “That’s about enough of that shit!!!”
Which usually stops the shit in its tracks without violence, because folks recognize that we mean business.
Which is exactly what Terry Jones just did.
I wish him well in the future. I hope that he does not surrender to the massive temptations of 15 minute fame and get used by the Palins and Limbaughs of this world. I suspect that he will not, because I think that he instinctively despises them to the same degree that he despises the Muslim Talibaners.
We shall see.
Jones often said that “God” told him to do take these actions. Now I don’t know if he actually hears voices (Do you? “No?” Hmmmmmm. Who said that?) or whether…as seems likely given his stoppage of the planned Quran burning…he simply tries to divine the will of the universe from the actions of its denizens. However he handles his business, I wish him well.
One way or another the arc of the universe continues to bend towards justice.
Martin Luther King Jr. believed this.
So do I.
And in his own way, so apparently does Terry Jones.
Godspeed, bro’.
And…God help you if you fuck up.
Just sayin’…
