Stupid. Creative! But Stupid

Today I want to honor stupid creativity in the news.

I am a great fan of creativity. I especially enjoy stupid creativity. The things that the newsmakers I’m going to honor today have done are outstandingly, stupidly, creative.

To start with we have the Laotian government, which has recently been under pressure from the Thai government to repatriate and create homes for thousands of Hmong refugees that have been living in Thailand since Laos fell to the communists in 1975. The Laotian government has brilliantly, creatively, responded to Thailand’s demands by asserting that 6000 or so Hmong are not, in fact, Laotian.

“Hmong? What Hmong? Oh those. Those are Hmong, sure, but they are not Hmong Hmong. They are your Hmong now. Good day.” Way to go Laos, you are awesomely creative!

Also awesomely creative is an individual, Mayor Frank Melton, of Jackson, Mississippi.

Mr. Melton was elected mayor in a campaign in which he promised to reduce violent crime in Jackson. When his assumption of office did not in itself achieve his stated goal, even after it was given plenty of time to work its magic, Melton decided to declare a state of emergency in the Mississippi capital, and under his emergency authority ordered a curfew for all minors and homeless people.

No, he didn’t claim that the homeless people were responsible for Jackson high levels of violent crime. He just tacked the curfew for the homeless people on to his order out of sheer liberal utopian idealism: he was moved by the plight of a homeless teenager to want to help. Which he did, by threatening homeless people with arrest if they didn’t let themselves be packed into a school gym every night.

How stupidly creative was Frank Melton’s curfew? Well, in the one month since it’s been in place, Jackson’s homicide rate has more than doubled! Fantastically stupid! I guess it’s easier to murder people now in Jackson than ever before, what with all the witnesses being put out of the way every night. And, better than that, Jackson has become a liberal utopian paradise, because Frank Melton has ended homelessness there, just like Franklin Roosevelt, our greatest liberal president, ended Japaneseness during WWII.

I thought nobody could top Frank Melton for stupid creativity until I heard about the new Las Vegas ban on feeding homeless people in parks. This new ban, devised by the Las Vegas city council, is outstanding. It is breathtaking in its stupidity and depravity. Only truly creative geniuses could be so stupid.

Boring cities elsewhere are always coming up with laws that are intended to ban feeding homeless people but that actually say boring things like, “you need a permit to feed more than such-and-so many people, so apply for a permit, and we’ll charge you so much for it you could have just used the money to buy dinners at fancy restaurants for everyone in the park.” Unlike those boring cities, Las Vegas has written an interesting and creative law, which addresses the problem head on. Their law says you just can’t feed homeless people in city parks. That’s it. You can feed housed people all you want. You just can’t feed homeless people.

How do you know if the person you’re feeding is homeless? They’ve thought of that problem and they’ve dealt with it in their brilliantly creative direct way. If they look homeless, that’s enough. The actual law defines a homeless person as an indigent "whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive assistance." So it doesn’t matter if they’re really homeless, you just need an ordinary person, like a cop, to think they might be.

The beauty of the law, to me, rests with the idea that to be ineligible to be fed in a park a person has to be believed, by an ordinary person, to be eligible to be fed. Congratulations Las Vegas! I could never have made that up!

Me For Mayor

If you are reading this paper close to the beginning of the month, and if you've been paying attention, you may know that Seattle is about to choose a new mayor.

I myself discovered this fact just last week. Here's how it came to my attention: I was just minding my own business, using the computer to make joke pictures of Tim Harris, our Director. With my back thus turned, he and our production manager were discussing who the Real Change ought to endorse for mayor. They were both certain that there was no way we could endorse either of the two official candidates, so that we would have to endorse a write-in.

Who should we pick? Well, lets see, they thought , who's not here? Why, Dr. Wes can do it! Dr. Wes will do anything! And the next time they spoke to me they said I'd have about 600 words for that wire service article and oh, by the way, we'll be running you for mayor hope you don't mind. Mayor of what? -- I asked, naturally. Of Seattle, they said.

Now I am told that this means I have to have a platform. We're sure you'll come up with something, they say. OK, well then here is my platform. These are my solemn promises to you the Seattle citizen should I be elected mayor.

1. If you have a complaint I will actually meet with you and hear it, once or twice. Maybe. If I feel like it. Lately I've had a cold.

2. I will cash my paychecks promptly and without complaint.

3. I will not maintain a house in a foreign country. Or, if I do, I will not spend much time there.

4. I will create a photocopy of my butt on Mayor's office stationary and send it to the City Attorney's office, and I will include an attachment to the effect that it is the view of the new mayor that the City Attorney's face is not a sidewalk.

5. Just for a hoot, I will propose laws designed to restrict the hours that homeful people can be on downtown streets. When people object, I will say, "Well, they have homes to go to, don't they? So why should we have to look at them?" When people still object I will laugh insanely and lock myself in my office for days.

6. When downtown businesses offer money to get their way with City Hall, I will politely decline it, reminding them that the City's policies are to be determined by its citizens at large and are not on an auction block.

7. Inauguration day: beer and pizza for all!

My slogan: "Let the vegetarians feed first. Then, while they're at it, we'll move in!"

Speaking of moving in, Operation Nightwatch and friends got out at 3am on the 24th for their annual count of Seattle's homeless.

As usual they only counted those who'd passed out in Seattle's "living room".

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I know that the Count is important and supplies a lot of useful information. For example say I want to camp in the Pioneer Square area. Consulting the tables I find that 77 of the 108 street people found there on the night of the 24th were either in public parks or under roads or bridges. Not one was found in a parking garage. So for a quiet restful night's sleep I should head for a parking garage, that's where the privacy is.

But, seriously, I won't be sleeping in Pioneer Square at all, because I don't want to be anywhere that I can be so easily spotted. By Operation Nightwatch, by the police, by thieves, or by anyone else.

When I have slept outdoors, I have always done so outside of the areas that are included in the count, because they get too much traffic, and I have made myself as invisible as possible. So invisible that I don't believe I could ever have been found by anyone who failed to trip over me. And that's the way most of the homeless people I know go about it.

But precisely because we make ourselves invisible we are never counted. The public sees only those who either don't care about their own privacy or who are in no condition to hide themselves effectively.