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From the coast of Texas today there comes news of three sport fishermen who were rescued by civilian boaters eight days after being stranded in the Gulf of Mexico due to equipment malfunction. The coastguard had called off their search, having had no luck after five days. Luckily, someone else spotted and rescued them.

But something is amiss. Have a look at the CNN article here. Why is a cop with a gun watching them in the article image? Is it because they’re black?

I dispute the concept of racism and the uses to which we put it in the US generally. We are far too quick to call on racism to explain what goes on between people of different races, often when racism is not involved. But racism is always present in the US, so much in small places we fail to notice. Our flawed concept of racism obscures the real racism with which we live, and the real problems of race go on unaddressed.

I can’t help but interpret this image as racist. Sure, we live in a totalitarian police state, but would white men have been photographed skulking away under the armed and watchful eye of the law? No, they would have been weeping, smiling, greeting their families, facing the camera.

The image positions its subjects as culprits, not victims. It seems tailored to communicating this notion. You can’t help but wonder if the men are lying about what they were doing out in the Gulf, or if they are somehow culpable for the accident. The image says they have something to hide, that they have done something wrong. Yet there is no information in the article to support these assertions.

This is the most troubling form of racism for me. We can deal with the idiot throwbacks full of physical hate. But this racism is harder to combat, as it is encoded in normal expectations, it is insidious and culturally embedded.

The person who selected this image and posted it on CNN probably did not intend to incriminate these men, but they did. Were they more sensitive it is likely they would have seen the implications of their choice of image and made another. Or elected to use no image at all. No image would have been better than this image, and a more accurate reflection of the content of the article.

Here is the image in case CNN takes it down…

Sometimes it can be difficult to control one’s impulses, especially where Facebook is concerned. See my recent adventures into trampling the toes of the dead for an example. But anyway as I was heading over to this website tonight I couldn’t help passing Facebook and I encountered one of these moments.

Now, I’m as cheeky as the next guy, but sometimes I edit myself because I know the public thing I want to say goes too far for most people. In general I think that’s a correct response. We are not here on this earth to spew every fluid thought we have into the aether for others to inhale. And there are plenty of people out there, Fernando being among the worst offenders, who think that to speak an offensive grotesque is the same as to speak a truth or a witty observation. But sometimes a thing to say is difficult to pass up, because it’s so good.

And yet, removed from context, it’s meaningless. So I’ll just say it, to satisfy myself, so I don’t have to say it where it will be understood and therefore cause offense…

“It’s almost like being poor.”

Fini.

Yesterday the radio (or wireless) was filled with chatter about the funeral of WWI veteran Henry Patch. A few weeks ago, all the talk was about the death of WWI veteran Henry Allingham.

Why is everyone so full of praise for these men they do not know? For all you know, Patch beat his wife and Allingham betrayed his best friend. The only extraordinary thing I’ve heard about their military service is that it happened in the 1910s. Living to 113 and 111 is not a virtue, it’s simply good fortune. As is surviving the carnage of the first world war. These are two of the luckiest men who ever lived. Is that what our society values most?

All the talk and all the blind effusive praise indicates a disease of the popular psyche. Perhaps we regret that we have made nothing of the world left us after those wars, that we still live in a world at war, full of inequality, injustice, greed and hatred. Perhaps we wish to convince ourselves that the millions of young men like Allingham and Patch who didn’t make it died for a reason.

Perhaps the grandchildren of the WWI generation, who are currently middle-aged, are nostalgic for their ancestors, or wish to compensate for their inability to relate to and honour their own progenitors while they lived. Perhaps we all feel guilty for ignoring older generations. How many WWI veterans have died unnoticed in nursing homes in the last forty years? How many WWII veterans are languishing in sad decline right now? Henry Patch and Henry Allingham are surrogates for our unexpressed love and admiration for our parents and grandparents.

We offer to the symbolic few the care and respect we have failed and are failing to offer to the literal many. So, bandwagon jumpers, check your motivations.

This may line me up for ironic punishment No. 1678, “Dronkinge reitered”, but ever since we got home from Brussels last night I have been experiencing death by a thousand waters. Every time I move I seem to encounter some small spillage or, indeed, cause one myself. Add to that the many million droplets in the air blocking out the sun and what you have is a man harassed almost to the breaking point by small amounts of life’s vital liquid. Well, maybe it isn’t that bad. I mean my shower was a happy flood. And perhaps ironic punishment No. 389, “Driefot Ner Drinke”, would be more suitable for a man complaining about tiny amounts of water interfering with his daily doings.

I have a lot of photos from our little trip to Brussels, which I will be putting up as soon as I can process them. Now it’s time to return to the harsh world of woodworking. Die, timber, die! I do it out of spite for trees.