Friday

Ask Ty...April 29 [The So-Called Birther Question]

It must be Tuesday Friday, Middlespace Cadets, because I'm answering your questions
Q: Dear Ty,

I know it's Friday and not Tuesday but I'm hoping you could answer my question anyway. I've been watching the evolution of this whole "birther" thing and wonder if you think all the idiocy is race baiting? Wouldn't this sort of stuff happen no matter what his color is?

Signed,

Mad in Manhattan

Ty: Good question and an even better observation, Mad in Manhattan (MiM). But let me point out that you just used "evolution" and "birther" in the same sentence, MiM. That's funny. As funny as the so-called "Birthers" and "Tea Baggers" claiming to be "colorblind to race." STFU!

So President Obama released his birth certificate the other day. Finally, right, MiM? I guess you can say he got "Trumped." Mr. Trump, who claims to have a good relationship with "the blacks," says it's not about race but about.... Actually I have no idea what Trump's doing other than masturbating his ego.

I remember the first time I got "Trumped." It was in Jr. High while I was walking home in my very white southern California town of Claremont. A cop pull his cruiser up beside me and yelled an impolite, "Hey!" I ignored this holler because I had no business with cops and I hadn't done a goddamn thing wrong (mustn't be me). He then yelled a high authoritarianism, "HEY! COME HERE!" My mind raced, my heart beat furiously, I'm sure I was sweating, and my eyes welled a little bit. But all urine remained in my body.

"What's your name?" asked the Claremont Police Department officer opening a little black notebook. I asked him politely why he was asking me this. He replied tersely, "There was a crime and you match the description." He may as well have said, because you're black. I politely provided my name.

"Where are you coming from?" the cop asked this middle school child wearing a fucking backpack at like 3:12 in the afternoon on a Tuesday while other kids in backpacks milled about. I would not have had time to fucking jaywalk let alone perpetrate some crime. "School," I answered adding the slightest pinch of "FUCKING DOY" (and a question lilt) to my answer and a sardonic shrug like Aubry Plaza would shoot Chris Pratt.

"Where are you going?" was the next question. After a short pause, I answered, "home," That was my answer. One simple word. Nothing more. I looked directly into his steely cop eyes, unblinking but not dick-like. The word "home" hung there like onion breath but he flinched first.

See, MiM, I already knew not to give the fucking cops shit because I watched plenty of TeeVee cop shows where they use your words against you all the time. "Home" was my answer and when he pressed me for my address I "lawyered up" and said, "My mother said I shouldn't give information to strangers and I don't know you so you'll have to talk to her but she's at work right now so I'm going to need your name and badge number for her to follow-up on this situation...and...aren't you not supposed to question children without their parents present?" I used my best and most articulate white person diction, too. I didn't gesticulate. I didn't yell. I wasn't angry. I sounded more Colin Powell than Schooly D. I was just one of the few black kids trying to survive some bullshit rousting on the tame streets of Claremont, California.

Who says you can't learn anything from the TeeVee? After a little while, that cop shut the fuck up. He actually stuck his cop finger in my face and told me, "watch yourself" and split. He never provided his name or badge number or training card ID or anything. He never offered to talk with my mom. He just pulled straight fail and left. And this was a decade before "Fuck the Police" became my graduate school jam. Nigga, don't ask me any of your racist "match your description" questions because I didn't do shit. MiM, I may have been profiled by the color of my brown-skin.

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Just last week the half-black president got Trumped too. By Donald Trump himself; the guy who says "your fired" on TeeVee and pretends to be important. Basically, The Donald and all the other so-called racist ass Birthers think this is Arizona or North Korea or some backwoods county where you have to show your papers all the goddamn time like some feudal peasant.

Barack Obama--the guy most of the voting public elected as the president of the United States of America in 2008--has basically strung the so-called Birthers along by their tiny testicles for like four years now. Now that it's re-election time he's all, oh yeah, oooookaaaay crazies, here's my birth certificate (while making the crazy sign/index finger twirly thing by his temple). Now the so-called Birthers all look even crazier, if that's possible. Obama basically took out the keys and drove the Birthers to school. In a short bus. It was as totally embarrassing to all Americans. Uh, actually embarrassing to all humans.

The vast right-wing conspiracy couldn't get anything to stick to Barry Oh!® so they're still--still--beating this dead horse. But the timing of the release now makes the already crazy Birther movement look clinically insane. And all the mainstream and establishment GOP apologists? Now they look retarded too.

OF COARSE™ it's racist, MiM. Doy! And any Democrat is going to be processed through this kind of meat grinder. Remember, MiM, Bill Clinton was a murdering, womanizing, bastard-fathering, socialist, married-to-a-lesbian, half-black, communist, baffoon. It's just bizzare.

Just a guess.

-ty