Ed McClelland is Bullet Proof
"In Englewood, the South Side neighborhood that spawned Chief Keef and Lil Durk, who won record deals by rapping about gang violence, almost 65 people have been killed this year. Whites are far more likely to oppose gun control than blacks, but we’re not the ones getting shot." Ed McClelland: Master of the Non Sequitur!
“It is a grave obligation to be a Lutheran, and to represent order and justice and kindness and the truth in this world.” Garrison Keillor - kidding on the square
At County Fair Foods the other day, I suggested to two of my African American pals that they turn in their race cards for the one I'm holding. A guy says that White Privilege makes you bullet proof. Antony said, " That's damn white of you, Hickey!" George laughed, "What about that white Art Museum N@##$% from Berwyn. That Tattooed rug lit him up."
Gents, I argued, That was not in the Hood, to use the euphemism. That was in the whitey is vulnerable zone - you know "crimes of opportunity" venues: Gold Coast, Milennium Park, Museums and Fests Universal"
They thanked me for the suggestion and went, one to vegetables and the other to Mike Benson at the Butcher section. I felt good.
Hey, anything for my pals and this is one dangerous city, not for whitey, but for people of color. Glad I didn't say Colored People, or George would have tuned me up, as he is a Chicago cop.
Be a Caucasian, or a white and lose the bullet magnet quality that comes with Twelve Years a Slave, ChiRaq and four hundred years of unresolved slavery. Cash that obsolete race card. Get on white side of history. Everyone else has.
Jews were slaves of the Egyptians and then they traded in their cards for white and became oppressors of victims universal in the West Bank, Gaza and Golan Heights. Jews, however, were required to undergo a few centuries of pogroms and eventually the Holocaust, but the got over it.
The Greeks were "house ENWORDS" to the Romans, then the Turks, then the Nazis and then IFM.
The Italians and Sicilians were also slaves of the Greeks, Romans, Muslims, Vikings, Normans, French and Hitler and over here are still not treated anywhere near like white people - ask the late Justice Scalia.
The Poles were slaves of the Russians, Napoleon, the Prussians and then the Russians again. Over in America they ain't white - they are close-knit ethnics and ignored by NPR, when there are so many LaQuan McDonald's and emerging nations to think about - in hushed tones. Oh, and they are Jew Haters,Black Haters and will never be Vegan.
St. Paddy was a slave to the Irish and then enslaved them as devout overly pious sexually repressed Christians who flocked to the Union banner and got slaughtered at Antietam, Fredricksburg, Gettysburg, Cold Harbor, the Wilderness and St. Petersburg and what was left became racist cops, judges, aldermen, real estate moguls, bankers and even a President. The Irish only got sort of white after JFK. Then of course the Irish became slave of Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and the Unitarian Church - which the 'better' Micks want the Catholic Church to become.
The Arabs are the people I know of in all of history who were never slave - always slave traders.
Things get better. Only if you go full white. I am an American Paddy. I had a number of good jobs that allowed me to work and get a college education, become a teacher, marry and daddy-up three great kids, write and live the life! It is privilege to serve. It has been a great privilege to serve my African American neighbors, in my small way. Things are deadly for those neighbors.
I know that. I walked all over Auburn Gresham, Englewood, Grand Crossing, Bronzeville and Chatham between 1995 and the present. Bullets have been fired at me by someone in the sociodemographic and geographic concentration of interpersonal gun violence on at least nine occassions and two very close calls. The first time a bullet whizzed past my right ear I called my Dad a veteran of Bougainville, Guam and Iwo Jima and described the sound. He asked, " Did you fill your union suit?" No, not at that moment. " You will the next time. Hit the pavement with your ass facing the shooter," he admonished. Why? " So you won't take it in the noggin."
Subsequently, I took "it" in neither rump, nor noggin. Bullets freed of the gun's magazine do not know the path they take. I was blessed by God and poor shooting skills of GDs and Vice Lords.
Nothing personal. Bullets are color blind.
Silly me, I thought I was blessed by God's grace and good fortune when the GD's decided to "ride the Nine down " on my Cracker ass that sunny day in 2002 at 79th & Sangamon. To paraphrase Pastor Pfleger, 'I'm white, and this is mine! I just gotta get up and step into the plate.' 'Oh, damn! Where did you come from? I'm white! I'm entitled! There's a black man stealing my bullet!'
Oh, Wait a minute!
Did I worry about getting shot? Hell, yeah! Trouble is - I had stuff to do that placed me in the shooting gallery. I have waited on corners at 10 PM with students until the parents arrived to pick them up from a field trip, or visit to a donor, because that is my job. I walked over to Rev. Corey Brooks' church on Dr. Martin Luther King Drive right on 'O' Street to give him a heads-up about Action 40 and Progress Illinois planned ambush protest, because he is a good guy and a friend of the school.
Did I worry? Sure, Pat and Ginny raised no foolish children. But there are fools aplenty waltzing on the terra.
Ed McClelland, the hilariously and unabashedly white man who will soon become the Garrison Keillor of the next generation and writer of homey, awe-shucks books that really lift the veil on white working class people in the rust belt who harbor such deep seeded racist feelings that they are often mistaken for lovers of humanity, knows that white privilege makes Caucasians bullet proof.
His book Nothing But Blue Skies was Michael Moore-job on rust belt America, where the capitalist system is to blame for misery and not the globalist policies of people like Bill Clinton, GW Bush and Barack Obama that sold everyone and everything with trade deals. It offers the same Lake Woebegone tonality of celebrating the chumps who suffer in Illinois, Michigan and Ohio, where "“Drive-ins and classic-car shows are to the Midwest what Civil War reenactments are to the South: remembrances of the region’s last glorious era.”
Obama said pretty much the same thing with his Bible and Gun Clingers speech.
Today, the Chicago Tribune in its relentless task of driving larger wedges between neighbors offers Ed McClelland's unasked for opinion on ballistics and white privilege.
Even in the midst of a gang war, I had no fear of getting shot. Why? Because I’m white.Edgy! Yep. Make a stupid claim and wait for Eric Zorn, Mary Schmich, Bruce Dold and the Editorial Board to circle the wagons and proudly stand with the stupid statement - that is what passes for journalism in ChiRaq.
There’s a ridiculous trope — put forward by the makers of TV crime dramas, auto alarm systems, handguns and attack ads against soft-on-crime politicians — that white people who set foot in the inner city are prey for African American criminals. Even my black neighbors believe it. “I think Caucasians who walk down this street are pretty brave,” one of the sneaker store owners told me.
“I think the black people are brave,” I said. “They’re the ones who get shot.”
Yes. Black people get shot. White privilege is a neologism employed by limited capacity group thought slaves. Black, white red, yellow, brown and henna people are killed because thugs feel comfortable in doing so here in Chicago, because policies have gelded the police, created the cottage industry of Wrongful Everything on the Justice System and the Lawsuit Lottery, writers like Ed McClelland and editors who love writers of Ed McClelland's stamp.
This guy is not Audie Murphy! Murphy ignored bullets and slaughtered Nazis - maybe not. Ed McClelland is only slaughtering common sense. This guy is Garrison Keillor!
I can do without either. That is white privilege.
