Heads Up, incoming

As an American I can’t help but be thrilled, as I am sure you are, by Lance Armstrong’s incredible win, for the seventh straight time, of some French contest or game or something, in their Frenchy country. But, I wonder, is that news I can use? Or not?

What the heck is news we can use, anyway? This is supposed to be a community newspaper. But what is community news, anyway? Is it just news that happens around here, in the local community? Is it news that makes our community feel good, like the Lance thing? Or is it news that tells us something that we can really use, such as an announcement of “heads up, incoming?”

I say it’s the “heads up, incoming” thing. Let’s take an example. About two weeks ago some terrorists set off three bombs in London, a city in another one of those unpatriotic countries where they don’t recite our Pledge of Allegiance. In fact it’s just above France on the map. Anyway, a week later, on account of those bombings, you had New York police randomly searching the bags of subway users.

Now, I don’t know much about geography. I don’t know the price of tea in China, now that their currency is no longer pegged to the dollar. I don’t know how much wool they mine in Australia, or whether or not they use modern synthetics instead. I’m a good American, so I prefer to mind my own business. But I can look at page 5 of my Funk & Wagnall’s Hammond World Atlas, as I’m doing right now, and I can tell you that Seattle is only an inch from New York, while New York is a whole inch and a half, about, from London!

What that tells us is this: the effects of three London bombings were able to travel, uh, three-fifths of the way here in just one week. So: Heads up! Incoming! You’re only two London bombs away from random searches of your own! Run and hide!

Let’s take a related example. Since the bombings the London police have taken to wearing all black, going around like ninjas, carrying guns, and shooting foreign looking guys who run away from guys that look like ninjas with guns. I would like to say it can’t happen here, but, HOLY-MOLY, our cops ALREADY carry guns, so ANYTHING could push them over the edge! Heads up! Incoming!

If you don’t believe me you should watch your local TV news, like Channel Nine and a Half News at Nine and a Half or whatever. Some guy named Greg or Steve will be talking to some woman named Nancy, say, and he’ll say, “So, Nancy, say, is there something the viewers here in Seattle can do to avoid being shot by men who look like ninjas with guns?” And Nancy, who plays the smart one, will say, “Yes there is, Greg or Steve. Experts around the world all agree that if you are confronted by men who look like ninjas and if they appear to have guns, you should NOT look foreign to them, and whatever you do, do NOT run away.” “That’s good to know, Nancy!” “It sure is, Greg or Steve!”

In fact the House of Representatives, a legislative body that often meets 3000 or so miles from here, has just decided it wants to renew the PATRIOT Act for another ten years. That could help pay for those cool all-black ensembles for our local police, not to mention more guns. I’m betting this is important to my homeless or formerly-homeless, mostly foreign looking, poor to middling-poor, already kicked-down & beaten-around community.

And for those of you who don’t look foreign, I want you to look around you at the foreign-looking people and say, out loud, so loud they can hear you, “There but for the Grace of God go I,” because I’m an incorrigible trouble-maker.