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| Bringing up Crazy |
| Papi Menon / San Francisco May 09, 2010, 00:15 IST |
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God certainly works in mysterious ways for some people.
A couple of weeks ago, in this column, I wrote about the sanity-challenged shenanigans of the city board of supervisors in San Francisco. Judging by the events of the past two weeks, it would seem that the disease is infectious.
First, we had the crazy guy with the pamphlets on the streets of New York warming the cockles of religious fundamentalists hearts everywhere with his spectacularly unhinged death threats against a cartoon programme. It turns out that his notion of the Almighty is radically different from that of most people — not for him the mundane idea of God as all-powerful creator of the universe. His vision of God seems to be that of a pale sensitive liberal arts major, whose self-esteem will not survive being stuffed unceremoniously into a bear suit. It seems terribly unfair, given that the organisation he runs — the Association of Easily Offended Religious Extremists — spends most of its time handing out flyers depicting Yahweh as a green blob. Then again, ‘turnabout’ does not appear to be a word in the lexicon of the overly religious.
That controversy blew over all too soon for some of us, and we were left wondering who would step up and deliver another round of hypocrisy, self-righteous anger and ill-directed spite for the next news cycle. Cometh the hour, cometh the state — the state of Arizona, to be precise. The legislators of the Grand Canyon state decided that it wasn’t sufficient for them to be known as the state with the most famous hole in the ground in the whole wide world. Instead, they got together and passed a piece of legislation that would seem to argue that they carry around a hole in their collective wool-gathering legislative head that rivals the Canyon in size and depth. The legislation in question makes it possible for police to arrest anyone who is suspected of being an illegal immigrant if they’re not carrying the right papers.
At the press conference announcing the decision, the Governor was asked how the law would be implemented. Most of the questions were about its practicality, and how a person could be identified as an illegal immigrant by appearance alone. The assembled newspersons were taken aback by the simplicity and ingenuity of the Governor’s response. She said every single member of the police force would be trained to develop an acute sixth sense that would enable him or her to sense the presence of any illegal aliens within a square mile. In addition to helping with the detection of undesirable immigrants, such a capability would also enable the police to respond quickly to the numerous UFO sightings reported in various corners of the state, Martians also falling squarely into the category of illegal aliens. In the unlikely event that an erroneous arrest was made based on these solidly reliable grounds, the arrestee would be presented with a pink unicorn, an engraved plaque of the Grand Canyon, and an all-you-can-eat gift certificate to Taco Bell. Even the most hardened and cynical reporter was forced to agree that these were quite favourable terms. She had already made her point, but the Governor invoked God just to drive home the deal. She didn’t mention His attire, so it’s safe to say that no one was offended.
(Papi Menon is a writer and technologist based in San Francisco)
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