Ira Kortum:Homophobic, pro-war, armed with chalk

“Seventy-eight percent of all people who protest are homosexual.” This quote and others like it are appearing on sidewalks and patios of the campus, like the one outside the Science 2 Building’s west entrance.

What fun, what ignorant, slanderous fun.

Here we are at war, doing all the right things for all the wrong reasons, everyone with their heads snapping back and forth at breakneck speed just trying to keep up with it all, and some wonderfully beautiful human being sitting at home decides, (insert stereotyped, comical, hate-monger image … hey, what’s good for the goose …)

“You know what? Those people prostestin’ duh war? They ain’t Amerikan. Huh. You know who else ain’t Amerikan? Fags, fags ain’t Amerikan. I bet most a dem protesters is nothin buta bunch a pansy-ass floppy-handed fags. Yep. Makes all the sense in da world. Wait a minute, that’s a discovery! I just made a discovery, I’m onna mission, gots ta’ get the word out. But how? How can I let the good people of ma country know the truth, spread the word? Wait, I got it! WHERE’S MA CHALK!!!”

And of all the places to see this type of scrawling, on a university campus, boy, it sure does give one hope for the future doesn’t it? A place where one likes to think that the idea of open thought, constructive compromises, debate, all these things and more are the actions that rule the day. And yet it isn’t.

Speaking one’s mind against an action that has caused, and for some time will continue to cause, the loss of innocent life makes you unpatriotic or, according to one sidewalk source, makes you a homosexual.

Whatever happened to simply being called a Commie? How did the exercising of one’s rights become an automatic labeler of who or what you are? Doesn’t anyone ever read the works of Franklin or Jefferson or Adams?

Is it good that we’re in Iraq?

Yes, watching the statue of Sadaam fall and the people celebrating in the streets with a look of what can only be described as relief on their faces makes it good that the United States is in Iraq.

Is it worth it?

No.

Seeing the aftermath of an attack. Seeing a young boy lay in bed with his body black from mid chest down and a white bandaged stump where his arm used to be while at the bottom of the screen the text reads that he is the only survivor and that his family – mother, father, and six or seven siblings – are dead. No, it isn’t worth it. But then who’s to say that had the United States not invaded, he would have been better off? It’s not an easy question to answer, and with the diversity of cultures and issues involved, it never can nor will be. And while somebody tries to chalk it up to a made-up statistic based on sexual preference, which is his constitutional right (yet, what a cowardly limp-D way to do it), the rest of us are left to try to answer the more difficult questions.

If it were only as easy as our friend the chalk writer would have us believe. One problem caused by one catalyst. Every issue singular of disagreement caused by one group, easy to find, identify and blame.

However, just because simpletons have the ability to put their two cents on what they think is a cause, it doesn’t make the issue any simpler. Still, it is appealing, isn’t it – the idea that no matter what it is that goes wrong there is always a singular cause, a group to blame? Wouldn’t that make life a lot easier?

Personally, I’d blame everything on lutefisk. Ugh, I can’t stand that stuff.