Iowahawk: I Am Bill
Iowahawk serves up another slice of righteous populist polemic, from a somewhat different angle: I AM BILL.
Every time I turn on the internet these days, it seems like another right wing blogger is digging up more baloney on Professor Bill Ayers. Apparently these people would rather talk about Bill Ayers’ passionate youthful rambunctiousness than the issues that really matter to us, like Sarah Palin’s shoe bill. Well, I’ve got a message for you, Mister Google cache McCarthy fascist: I’m mad as H-E-double sippy straws, and I’m not going to take it any more. No longer will not remain silent while you smear and slur this great America-hating American with his own quotes. Hear me now: when you mess with Bill Ayers, you’re messing with me.
Because I AM BILL.
I AM BILL. I am the everyday forgotten little guy in your neighborhood, the quiet anarcho-syndicalist family man who gets up early and punches the clock at the local state university, writing the manifestos and polemics and grant proposals that keep America humming. I’m just doing my job, and all I ask in return is a little respect. And tenure. And Chicago Citizen of the Year awards. And two graduate assistants to grade exams for Practicum in Imperialist Racist Hegemony 311, because I’m teaching two sections this semester. Also, a sabbatical to Italy next summer would be nice.
I AM BILL. I grew up in a simple little gated community just like yours, with white picket fences and where all the aux pairs and gardeners know your name. When my dad came home from a hard day’s work as a CEO, he was never too tired to help me with my homework or tousle my hair for winning the Lake Forest Academy essay contest on Hegelian Dialectics. Yes, he was a simpleminded bourgeois technocrat of the capitalist war machine, but he made sure I got the tuition and tutors and sailing lessons and allowance I needed to make it on my own. I wish he was still alive so I could tell him how much I really planned to kill him last.
I AM BILL. I work with my hands, grizzled and calloused from years on a non-ergonomic keyboard. Maybe I don’t know pipe wrenches, but I know pipe bombs, and I’ve built them right there in my communal kitchen and I’ve watched with pride as they’ve offed a couple of pigs. Sure, maybe I’ve made a few mistakes with wiring or detonator timing and it ends up killing a couple of comrades. But you know what? I get up, dust myself off, and get right back to the drawing board. Because when it comes to international Maoist revolution, quitters never win and winners never quit.
I AM BILL. I love traveling the highways and byways of this great, puke-inducing country we call America, visiting its police stations and ROTC buildings and legislative halls. And when the pigs finally catch up with me and dad hires a legal team to get me off on a technicality, it lets me know that yes, Bill, you can go home again.
