At ten years of age the Second World War ended. My dad took me to town to the Telenews theater. Their specialty was reel after reel of war films. We sat together and watched wordlessly as our American boys opened one prison camp after another. We saw walking corpses and piles of dead people and American boys openly crying over the horror before them.
Even at ten years of age I recall wondering how someone could do this to other people and still call themselves human.
But as great a crime as all that was, on the playfield at my grade school there were children snickering and chanting, "If I knew you were coming I'd of baked a Kike", and when they felt cheated by another playmate they'd shout, "You Jewed me!"
It was on the all white middle class playground that I first heard words like, Niggar, Jigaboo, Chink, Jungle Bunny, Spade, Buck, Half Breed, Kraut, Spastic and "Deef and Dumb. There were more, but you get the picture. When Thomas Dewey ran for president, they all sported campaign buttons that said, "Time for a Change".
Those little darlings are all about 75 years old now. They went away from that playfield and their parents paid their college education and they went forth and married and produced more little carbon copies of themselves.
Whenever I hear George Bush or Sarah Palin talk, those far off memories spring up and I see all those simpering, sneering little bastards. And at that moment I can feel the heat of Helen Thomas's words.
Curious Carl
No comments:
Post a Comment