FROLIC IN THE PARK
Fizz Reports From The Front Lines
It isn’t every day that you get the chance to participate in a protest demonstration, especially in a town the size of mine. If anybody protests anything, it’s usually an increase in the school tax, or the arrival of yet another chain store, and they do their protesting through the letters column of the local paper. But something happened on May 21, that was unlike anything I’d ever seen or been a part of before. And I have no choice but to share it with all of you.
In the past month, Seaford has had two native sons killed in Iraq. Two Marines, in separate incidents, in different cities, a week apart, from the same town. For a place with a population of about 6800, that’s a pretty big deal. I think I heard that, of the fourteen soldiers from Delaware who have been killed since the beginning of the war, three of them were from Seaford.
And then the news came: we’d have some special out-of-town visitors for the funerals.
You’ve probably heard of this so-called church from Kansas, so I won’t bother mentioning their name. They’ve been making headlines lately by staging protests at soldiers’ funerals. Why? Are they your basic antiwar Bush-haters? Nope. This is a different breed entirely. See if you can follow this “logic”: This bunch is demonstrating at the funerals of soldiers because, they say, God is punishing America for “tolerating” gays. Uh … all right? So they roll into town, waving their signs and tromping on the flag and get everybody upset, and then claim it’s their right, guaranteed by the First Amendment. And the hell of it is, they’re right! They ARE allowed to do their thing, technically. Needless to say, they have a few lawyers In the bunch, so they know their goddamn rights backward and forward. So they hide behind the local police like a bunch of little girls, and the cops have no choice but to protect them. Then, if something happens, they turn around and sue the town or the state for not providing protection, or for otherwise infringeing on their rights, and bingo! More money for future road trips!
Well, “something” happened last Sunday.
Like most states who have been forewarned that these scumbags are coming, Delaware rushed through an ordinance requiring all protests at military funerals to be a certain distance away. So the town set aside a park near the church as the designated protest area. A veterans’ biker club called the Patriot Guard Riders, were invited by the family to attend, and said they’d be there with bells on. Of course, the Riders’ mission isn’t to start any trouble, they’re careful to point out. They’re there only to pay their respects and shield the family from having to look at a passel of Jayhawker trash and their vile signs. The rest of us were under no such restrainss. And so, having been outraged by the news reports I’d seen on this mess, and always looking for action, I had no choice but to hie along to the park for an afternoon of fun in the sun.
All of downtown was filled with people, all up and down both sides of the street, standing around with their flags and other paraphernalia. Both the high school and middle school parking lots were completely full of motorcycles. But at first, it didn’t appear that anything else was really going on. Had they already left? Had they even come at all? Then we turned a corner, and there it all was. God Hates Fags, Too Late To Pray, Vengeance IS Rising, Semper Fi Fags, read a few of the signs. And there they were, about ten in all, fine specimens of coitus porcinus Topekus, more commonly known as the Kansas pigfucker. They were smirking and mugging and dragging the flag through the dirt. And surrounding them was a huge crowd of pissed-off locals. They screeched. They whooped. They cursed. They bellowed insults. They waved flags. A few motorcycles, apparently not Patriot Guard Riders and therefore not bound by the same constraints, roared around, doing burnouts, revving menacingly. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many people that mad in one place. It was an amazing thing to see.
Of course, through it all, the pigfuckers, as I have come to call them, stayed just within the law. Pepole tried to goad them into coming out of their little corner. “Come on over here!” one guy thundered. “Come on, motherfucker, let’s do it, let’s see how bad you are!” Someone tried to get a fuck-you chant started, but as unsuccessful, possibly because there were little kids around. The racket mput up by the enraged hometown crowd was almost deafening. There were guys with their shirts off, ready to get to it. Someone threw a full bottle of Coke at them, and there were more than a few folks ready and willing to play some Kansas thump-thump.
Things finally came to a head near the end of the allotted protest time. That’s about when they whipped out a new sign: Your Son Was A Fag. WHOA! That tore it, you might say. The general ruckus got even louder and took on an even more furious tone. You could almost taste the bloodlust in the air. In short, the light was green.
There were so many conflicting reports and anecdotes, I had to watch the news to get the full, official story of what happened next. Apparently, a man broke through the police barricade and threw down on two of the pigfuckers. The police, sensing that things were rapidly careening into chaos, started herding the pigfuckers away. The pigfuckers, sensing the same thing, and being cowards to the hilt, put down their signs in a hurry. But somebody had gotten to the van they were traveling in first, and slashed the tires (it turned out to be a rental van—should’ve guessed they wouldn’t bring their own wheels to possibly get trashed.) So the police commandeered the fire company’s van and stuffed them into that, just ahead of some angry townfolks, who proceeded to bust out the windows. In all, five people were arrested, most for criminal mischief and disorderly conduct, but the one guy for assault as well.
There was a lot of scolding from some people afterward. Lots of people said, “Nice job, you gave them what they wanted. Now they’ll sue and get money for their next few trips.” And I imagine there were a lot of people sitting at home that night saying to one another, “You know, we fucked up today. Why’d we let them push our buttons and get us all riled up like that?” And I pondered this myself, but in the end, you know what? I’m glad it happened the way it did. We should ignore them? What the hell sense does that make? Should we have ignored Hitler too? I realize that ten assholes who call themselves a church (for tax purposes as much as anything else, I bet) don’t compare to a nation of brainwashed Krauts. But still! You don’t ignore something that’s THAT wrong going on in your backyard, even when you’re in a no-win situation like we were. When all was said and done, I’m goddamn proud of us.
Naturally, the pigfuckers put their own spin on the events. One of the local papers spoke to a nut-job from the group, who said things had gone “smashingly, wonderfully, awesomely.” Smashingly? You mean like that one dude’s face? She went on to gush about how the people of Seaford had shed innocent blood, which would open the way for God’s vengeance, or some such drivel.
So the second funeral was Wednesday, and since they’d had so much fun, the pigfuckers decided they’d hang around for that one too. Authority figures and opinion leaders warned everybody to have nothing to do with them, to pretend they didn’t exist. The bereaved family issued a statement, asking people to stay home and honor their son with “prayer and solemn vigil.” A lot of people, however, were only too happy to have another go at the pigfuckers. Solemn vigil? Fuck that! Not when there’s good stompin’ to be had! I wondered, was it really a good idea to come back to a town where you’d nearly caused a riot three days earlier? It only takes one Vietnam vet with a gun and a screw loose to take all the sport out of these little outings for our corn-fed friends, and it’s not a matter of if, but when.
Police were everywhere today. They’d picked out a new site, another park, this one with only one way in or out, for better crowd control. They had motorcycle cops, cops on horseback, concrete barriers, sandbags, chain-link fencing, the whole enchilada. And all of it for these poor citizens who were just trying to exercise their Constitutional rights by desecrating the flag and spewing incoherent hate.
And guess who didn’t show up? You guessed it. The pigfuckers pussed out. I’ve heard gossip in town in the days since that someone connected with the outfit said that they weren’t coming back because nothing like that had ever happened to them before, and they wanted no part of it. I would dearly love for that to be true, and that would be a normal person’s thought process. “Gee, we nearly got lynched, maybe we better not go back there!” it seems doubtful though. After all, these aren’t normal people, and after all that gloating in the newspaper? I’m honestly not that familiar with their past adventures, so I don’t know if they get this kind of welcome in every town they come to, but the lesson we learn from this is clear: you don’t fuck with Seaford! You got lucky, shitheads!
This has been Fizz, reporting from the “bloody, violent, undisciplined and vicious community” of Seaford.
Today’s inspirational song lyrics are brought to you by Slayer:
“Forgotten children, conform a new faith: avidity and lust, controlled by hate. A never-ending search for your shattered sanity, souls of damnation in their own reality!”
