The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Je Suis Fred

Francophobe Fred was lecturing with a cold limp French fry to a few of us malingerers at the newly christened Leatherhedz Pub and Swill. Admittedly, we were deep in our cups, not quite ready to face the music at home, although … a few more flaccid fries with ketchup dripping noodled in our faces, anything would look better.

“They’re ALL terrorists!” he shouted. A fat splotch of ketchup put an exclamation point on Ralph’s Carhartt jacket. Another stain only added to the ‘worn’ look of it, but even so, Ralph rubbed at it as if it were acid eating through to his chest. “Jeez, Fred, watch where you’re shakin that fry! This coat’s American made.”

“The hell, you say.” And for a moment, I thought the invocation of jobs still in this country might swing Fred onto another of his favorite rants, illegal immigration and jobs going overseas. But no, he popped the accused fry into his mouth and said between chews, “A few more boatlads and they’ll ram Sharia Law through. The French won’t know what hit em til it’s too late. Maybe,” he wondered aloud, brandishing another greasy potato stick, “they’ll get the message now.”

Ralph was muttering. He’d poured part of his beer on a napkin and was furiously scrubbing the ketchup stain deeper into cotton grown in Bangladesh and sewn in Mexico by workers who hadn’t yet smuggled themselves north. “I’m getting the message, Fred. Jeez, settle down.”

“It’s about Free Speech, Ralph, can’t you see what’s happening?” Ralph shook his head sadly. “I see this ketchup isn’t coming out, that’s what I see, Fred.” Ralph looked like he’d been shot in the chest, blood oozing above his right breast pocket. Jerry, two stools down, laughed out loud. “He means that cartoon of Muhammed, Ralph. They got a right to make fun at someone’s religion, that’s what he means.” None of us waiting for Last Call were particularly religious.

“Damn right that’s what I mean! They don’t like it, lump it … or leave the country. All of em!” “Or what?” I asked, breaking off from watching Ralph washing his coat with Budweiser.

“Round em up! Send em home where they belong! Why the hell not?”

“Their free speech?” I asked. “Freedom to live where they want?”

Ralph stood up suddenly. Fred drew back as if expecting the worst. “I gotta go,” Ralph blurted. He lurched out of his booth. “I don’t want this to set. Maybe I can still soak it in cold water.”

“Soak yer head too,” Fred called after him, although not loud enough for Ralph to hear. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to call it a night. Facing the music looked like a real good plan. “Wait up, Ralph,” I hollered. “I’m right behind you.” Sometimes freedom isn’t at all what you think.

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Those of you who think the Wild Wild West is gone from the gentrified South End, I’ll tell you a story. I got a call this morning at an uncivilized hour, something that the mizzus really hates, especially when it’s a threatening phone call, another victim of Skeeter’s satire taking serious umbrage. The Barefoot Bandit’s demented mom called one time while I was on a field trip and she didn’t sleep until I got home to take care of my mess, figuring, probably for good cause, someone might want to knock the door down to discuss matters. This call, however, was from a neighbor pissed off I had called him out in the widely circulated Crab Cracker for poaching crab. “You must have a guilty conscience,” I laughed in the pre-dawn hours.

Bingo. Sometimes Skeeter’s right on target. Rare, but it happens. My pal had been poaching crab, the police had been summoned and …. well, no point repeating the tale. I said I had someone else in mind, happened to use your given name, purely coincidental. He was unconvinced until I mentioned I’d written the story six months before his transgression.

“Well, okay,” Poacher Paul sez, still not totally sure I wasn’t conning a con. “But I got a better story for ya….” This, dear reader, is how reporters work. We develop contacts, undisclosed sources, ‘anonymous’ insiders. And then we wait for them to call us, why go hoofing around the nettlebottoms looking for leads? They’re dying to tell their story.

So maybe you remember the heroin addict up the road stealing from my neighbors I wrote about this past month? Or maybe you don’t. We got this yahoo addict living in the ‘hood, sheltered by a buddy’s neighbor. My buddy was robbed three times. He goes to see the neighbor and the neighbor won’t even talk to him. He sees the pilfering addict and the addict runs into the woods when he’s approached. It doesn’t take Perry Mason to figure who’s guilty here. But the cops can’t do anything but take reports and hope for a break in the case.

Down on the South End, we don’t like to wait for the break in the case. We like to be a tad more hands-on. So my neighbor and Poacher Paul and an ex-cop they bring along, go to visit our thief, ‘alleged’ not really applicable at this point. Did I mention it was 3 in the morning? And they brought a shotgun, a semi-automatic assault rifle and — my favorite part! — a video camera to record the whole thing. They commence to banging on the doors and bedroom windows, yelling to come out with hands up, guns drawn … and hear screaming that ‘they’re going to kill us, they’re going to kill us!’ If you’ve lived here as long as me and Dave, the guy now sheltering Needleboy, you would know the sheriffs shot a man to pieces wanted on warrants same time of night a house or two away back in the ‘80’s. Threw in a stun grenade, then shot him up like Bonnie and Clyde. He’d been seen firing his assault rifle on Bernie Road, a peaceful little cut-off to pretty much nowhere back then. We don’t cotton to that down here, I don’t care how much we seem to like firearms and the NRA.

Dave probably figured sleepily what his options were here and came out on his porch in his BVD’s blasting away with a sawed off shotgun. Events involving weapons have a way of getting out of hand…. By now my neighbor is in Dave’s house with his shotgun, waving it around like a can of aerosol air freshener. He wants his stuff back and he wants it right %$!!?**#@ NOW!

Course you know and I know that stuff is long gone, sold for peanuts and used to buy a few more fixes. I’m assuming our vigilantes knew that too, they simply wanted to put an exclamation on their point. Which was …? Well, hard, really, to say. I’m just a reporter, not a psychologist. But I’m guessing they wanted him to move up the line, maybe the North End. If you’re from up there, you might want to think twice before taking in boarders.

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So okay, the terrorists are killing cartoonists and satirists. Make sport of them at your own risk, Monsieur! There’s definitely something lacking in a jihadist — a funny bone maybe?

Don’t ask me why, but you take folks real serious about their religion — any religion — and you poke a bit of fun at their beliefs, good chance you’ll need Kevlar clothing. Mix in some politics — and no, let’s not call that a religion yet — and you got all the makings for a full blown riot.

Now you might not believe this, but old Skeeter here pulls his punches. Religious idealogues and right wing Tea Partiers, I try to avoid poking my elbow in their eye socket. Too easy a target, maybe. Or maybe freedom of speech should have some self –imposed limits. Granted, I think those limits shouldn’t be imposed by the government — and definitely not by pissed off terrorists and North Korean chubby dictators. Bad taste is offensive but doesn’t meet the capital punishment test. Not only that, but the counter-reaction is going to be grim, nasty and violently incommensurate with the perceived grievance. You think a Fatwah to kill Salman Rushdie is ill advised, wait til the Europeans’ favorite hairstyle is Skinhead and the new Jew is Moslem. The joking’s going to stop real quick.

So forgive me if I skip the cartoon of you-know-who or the name-that-cannot-be-spoken or the politician-who-needs-horsewhipping-with-his-own-tongue. Short of a funny bone transplant, what’s the point? Their world is set in granite, nothing humorous is going to penetrate their idealistically pure forcefield. I’d poke fun at us satirists, but hey, we’re a little busy right now screaming First Amendment! First Amendment! in our building that’s not quite on fire. There’s no one left here except us trampled few….

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