The straw that broke the camel’s back
A story about the perils of not listening…
Today, let’s start with a story that may or may not be appropriate: your call.
Political cartoonists are always looking for material and as a result we read a lot. Back when I had an office, if you stuck your head in, odds were about 50-50 I’d be drinking coffee and reading a newspaper.
(As a cartoonist once said; the problem with our profession was when you were doing it, it looked just like you were goofing around.)
Anyway…
If I didn’t read every word in a newspaper article, I would at least read every headline and every lead paragraph of every story in a newspaper and this was back when newspapers had a lot more stories.
As a result I read a lot of those weird human interest stories that newspapers used to print to fill up the space between lingerie ads and sales at mattress stores.
And one of those weird stories stuck with me.
Some old guy shot his wife dead and called the police to let them know what he’d done. When the cops showed up and asked him why he shot his wife, he said he had false teeth and couldn’t chew anything tough – which he’d told his wife over and over – and that night she had served him a steak.
Turned out, it was one steak too many.
If his wife had listened to him, she could have avoided a lot of trouble like getting shot which is probably why the story stuck with me; keep pulling the same bullshit over and over and even though you get away with it for years, someday it might backfire on you.
Which oddly enough, leads to the NFL.
I cannot tell you how my mind works or why I make weird connections or have dreams about someone hitting a bases-loaded double in Fenway Park and then saying that ball in the gap was a beautiful sight which is an actual dream I had last night, but this morning I read an article mentioning Colin Kaepernick and that made me think about the guy with false teeth.
Four years ago Colin Kaepernick tried to tell us there was something wrong and we didn’t listen.
Instead, we chose to focus on the way he delivered the message – kneeling during the national anthem – and made that the issue instead. If we had listened to what Kaepernick was trying to tell us, we could have avoided a lot of trouble, but instead we continued to serve up steaks too tough to chew.
In my metaphor, George Floyd was one steak too many.
After the Democrats offered up legislation on police reform, John Cornyn, a Republican Senator from Texas had this to say:
“This is sort of classic Washington. You have one isolated and tragic event and people extrapolate that and suggest this problem is an epidemic.”
If it was an isolated event, why was Colin Kaepernick kneeling four years ago? Calling George Floyd an isolated event ignores all the unarmed black men that have been killed by cops and self-appointed vigilantes and this has been going on for centuries.
We have a problem with racism in this country and pretending we don’t will not make the problem go away.
After the Democrats put forward their police reform ideas, President Trump said that they had “gone crazy.” The above cartoon poses this question: considering what the country is currently going through, is it crazy to try to change things or even crazier to think we don’t need to?
Maybe it’s time to listen.