The Weekly Screed (#580)

Tracking down the mind 
behind an Internet hit
by David Benjamin

BROOKLYN — Mark Twain is credited — perhaps spuriously — with saying that “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

This observation applies lately to a popular but anonymous snatch of sliphorn jazz that recently landed in my e-mail. It begins: “You know you live in an Upside-down Land if a Muslim officer crying ‘Allah Akbar’ while shooting up an army base is considered to have committed ‘Workplace Violence’ while an American citizen boasting a Ron Paul bumper sticker is classified as a ‘Domestic Terrorist.’”

This bizarre sentence is a simplification — based on legal and bureaucratic lingo generated by two separate, unaffiliated government agencies — so gross that no one but the mentally ill could take it seriously. However, it is the essence of Anon’s entire thesis.

Which makes is a veritable magnet for the mentally ill. Before I tired of counting, I found this “Upside-Down” tantrum on 33 separate websites — often introduced with the doublespeak tag: “This is too damned accurate to be funny.”

Most of the verses in this rhymeless rap, of course, convey the hollow snarl of those embittered tightwads who hate paying their share toward what the Founding Fathers called “the general welfare.” But especially they despise the nickels and dimes which — they fear — might trickle to those fellow Americans whom Emma Lazarus lyrically described as “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore… the homeless…”

Another typical verse: “You know you live in an Upside-down Land if the government’s plan for getting people back to work is to provide 99 weeks of unemployment checks (to not work).”

We’ve heard these kvetches, so often, from the same grouches that we barely listen anymore. But the grouches are on the Internet now. They’re addicted to urban legends, half-truths, sound bites, coded bigotry and outright lies — all of which have the literal power to travel all the way around the world while Mark Twain is looking for his shoes.

For instance, Anon’s hate-list notes that only in Upside-Down Land can “a seven-year-old boy… be thrown out of school for calling his teacher ‘cute…’” while elsewhere it’s “acceptable” to host “a sexual exploration or diversity class in grade school.”

Unlike most of Anon’s verses, this one provides links to sources. Pursuing these, I learned that in a Florida grade school, a principal named Jerry Bostic suspended a third-grade boy named Emanyea Lockett because the kid was overheard praising his new teacher’s pulchritude. However, beyond Anon’s sources, I found the whole story — which is a wet blanket for grouches, because good sense prevailed. Within days, a public outcry in Emanyea’s favor landed the kid back in class (ogling his hot teacher) and ex-principal Jerry Bostic on the bricks (applying for 99 weeks of unemployment).

And that grade-school “sexual exploration” class? Well, the details are pretty lurid, but they didn’t happen in a grade school or any public school at all. The kinky goings-on involved young adults at a private college, Northwestern University, in a popular course on human sexuality. But nothing happened in the actual class. The “sexual exploration” part was an optional after-class tutorial. So, “accurate?” Feh.

Later in “Upside-Down,” Anon forsakes accuracy altogether while whining about how U.S. Supreme Court justices — who convene hypocritically ‘neath a copy of the Ten Commandments etched in stone — nonetheless presume to deny the right of non-Supreme state judges to display the very same Commandments in their courtrooms.

Trouble is, the Commandments aren’t posted anywhere in the Supreme Court. One courtroom frieze depicts Moses with a tablet, where you can see (if you squint through your opera glasses) the Roman numerals 6-10. But the granddaddy of Judaic law shares the wall with other historic lawgivers, among them Christians (Charlemagne), pagans (Hammurabi), Muslims (Mohammed) and even a Chinaman (Confucius).

Although the viral “Upside-Down” tirade contains an abundance of meanness, nativism and fear, its ideology is vague. The poet seems to favor a sort of Christianist theocracy, but this ain’t the loaves-and-fishes Jesus Christ that I grew up with.

Here’s my old-school Jesus: “Come, you who are blessed … For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” (Matthew 34-36)

Here’s the new (Anon) version: “You know you live in an Upside-down Land if you pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big-screen TV while your neighbor defaults… (while buying iPhones, TVs and new cars) and the government forgives his debt and reduces his mortgage (with your tax dollars).”

Of course, Jesus knew folks like Anon. Here’s what he told them (Matthew 45-46): “‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” Jesus warned that the punishment for their spitefulness would be “eternal.”

I spent a while trying to figure out who started this “Upside-Down Land” thing in the first place. The earliest post was last December, by a blogger concealed behind the monicker “Enola Gay.” Enola describes herself as a “a christian, conservative, survival minded, homeschooling, off-grid, independent, home-birthing, Proverbs 31, Titus 2 minded 40 year old woman.” (Not, I suspect, Emanyea Lockett’s type!)

I couldn’t help smiling at Enola’s mordant humor as I read these lines in Proverbs 31: “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

Truer to the spirit of Anon’s kick-ass prose is Titus 2, which doesn’t truckle with anybody’s “rights” — especially the unemployed, the homeless, the tempest-tost: “Bid slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect.”

You go, Gay! A few more whips and shackles, and America’ll be Rightside-Up in a jiffy.