frenemies

At his super fly rally a few days ago , Jon Stewart mentioned how shit goes real bad when you can't tell friend from foe.

In response to Park51, many open-minded opponents cited some shit like "..... you wouldn't build a Shinto shrine on Oahu in the months after Pearl Harbor, would you?"

The important thing to remember is WHERE the attack came from. It's okay to acknowledge groups. They're out there. Lines are drawn. Sometimes they're clear to see (African versus Eskimo). Sometimes they're not so easy to see (tranny versus tranny). But the point is, groups are, more or less, out there. Fine.

But - if you had any sort of loving childhood or a decent upbringing in a good public elementary school - you would know that one person doesn't represent the entire group.

In school, kids are always reminded before field trips: Remember, when we get to [insert place with gift shop and marginal educational value here], you are an AMBASSADOR of [insert school name here]. So don't take lewd photos of the Washington Monument as your dick, don't do pullups off the wing of a prop plane at the Liberty Science Center* and DEFINITELY don't grope the Marilyn Monroe wax statue. ARE WE CLEAR???

Still, very few of us come out as perfect ambassadors of whatever group we're in. How could we? It's hard enough to stand on ceremony and make ourselves look presentable half the time. And we're expected to do that for ourselves PLUS our 80 distinct colleagues? C'mooooon!!

So, captain Brilliant - did the Shinto religion make the call to decimate the boats? No. In the end, it was probably a couple Japanese military guys huddled together in a reinforced pagoda, one of which was clever enough to think, "Hey, they'll never see THIS one coming!"

So if a statue of that one clever dude went up at Hawaii, we'd have a problem. Otherwise, putting a Shinto shrine in the area (and I'm told there are many, given Hawaii's Japanese population) shouldn't be an issue.

Neither should a prayer space at Park51. Muslims attacked the US, true enough. A few Muslims. All of Islam didn't do it! Just a few of it's angrier, crazier members who played a lot of Flight Simulator during their downtime. (And let's face it- if all of Islam wanted us gone, we'd probably have been decimated a long time ago.)

If a black guy steals my non-existent Toyota Camry, do I scowl every time I pass an NAACP building? If small children mock my short Asian man stature as I'm sitting in the park, do I spraypaint "SANTA CLAUS IS YOUR PARENTS" on the wall of the local YMCA? Is one femme fatale justification for hating everything with a vadge?

(The answers to the above are "of course not," "depending on my mood," "of course not.")

Similarly. Couple pissed off Muslims fuck our shit up doesn't mean we take it out on all of them. Think of the converse: say the nicest picture-perfect American family is hiking through Iraq on vacation (Iran was booked). Mom, dad, two kids, dog, minivan. Insurgents grab them and throw bags over their heads, drag em in front of the camcorder and do all the usual shit. Then one of them says - probably in a thick, hard-to-type accent straight out of Call of Duty :

You American devils bombed my village and slaughtered my family in the process. For that you will pay dearly.

Petrified American dude : That wasn't us! The people who did that maybe looked like us, ate the same unhealthy food and listened to the same degrading-and-provocative-but-still-very-catchy music as us, but that wasn't us!!! For the love of God, put down the scimitar and let us go!! WE did nothing to you!

Suddenly we're shouting the same exact thing that every nice Muslim** in the US is saying, hoping it'll stick. At least, from the point of view of the impending decapitee, it makes sense.


* Were it not for an attentive security guard, I would have done this.
** Note that there are definitely bad Muslims in the US, as there are bad Jews, bad Mexicans, bad Italians, bad Singaporeans, bad albinos, bad taxi drivers (all), bad clergymen, bad journalists, bad _____s, etc.
*** And unfortunately, the number of bad Muslims in the US might creep up, as 24 is no longer on the air. The mortality rate of Middle Eastern men in the US actually dropped a little since the show concluded back in May.