"The Monsters Are on Maple Street"

On another blog that I frequent, I read a funny, satirical look at all the anger that's sweeping our country right now.

I responded in kind, giving my analysis [thoughtful of course :)] of all the craziness that's got us behaving like this country is in some kind of Twilight Zone TV show.

The show that came to mind: "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street." It's one of my favorites, and you can see some of these wonderful shows, and others, by following this link to the site, FANCAST.

The show starts out innocently enough with a shadow, a roar overhead, and a flash of light (a meteor, a ship?) that get everyone wondering what's up on this pleasant summer evening, especially when lights in everyone's home go out, and machines stop working.

A comic-reading kid insists that aliens have landed and have planted an alien, monster, family in their midst.

This story spreads like wildfire, neighbor blaming neighbor, until distrust, suspicion, and prejudice, threaten to engulf the whole town, as lights came on, and went off, in one house after the other.

Unbeknownst to the denizens of this small neighborhood aliens have landed on the hilltop overseeing their frenzied madness. The aliens are seen with the gadget they're using to manipulate the lights, "comment[ing] on how easy it was to create paranoia and panic, concluding that the easiest way to conquer the Earth is to let the people of the Earth destroy themselves, one 'Maple Street" at a time.'" [Wikipedia]

The closing narration is truly revealing, providing insight into our human nature, a nature that we'd rather keep hidden:

"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices. To be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and the frightened, thoughtless search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own: for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things can not be confined to the Twilight Zone." [Wikipedia]

This television show and the closing words were the brainchild of writer, Rod Serling, the long-time conscience of this nation. Without Rod Serling to speak truth to lies, this country has lost its way more often than it has found its moral compass. Twould that he was still alive today.

As it turns out, we're the Monsters on Maple Street. We didn't have to look farther than ourselves.

Here's what I left over at the other blog.

On behalf of all blacks, let me say this to those white Americans that voted for John McCain:

We knew that it was too early to put a black man in the White House (After all, it's the "White" House.)

And we're sorry that we went to the polls in such numbers that we're now guilty of the biggest racist crime of all: Blacks voting en masse for another black.

But, if there's any consolation, not all of us voted for Barack Obama. Some of our black conservative cousins voted for McCain.

That should make you happy to some extent. Not all of us blacks were racist to the point of voting for a black man.

I know: it looked like we were putting all our money on the black horse, hoping that the long shot would pay, what, a 1000 to 1?

We didn't know he'd actually win. We had the audacity of hope, and we chanted right along with whites, "Yes We Can," but we didn't really think we could.

His election surprised us, too! So don't hold it against us. Obama was our "dream deferred." We were tired of "raisins in the sun." We wanted to eat grapes from the vine, not dried up raisins again.

And Kanye West, and Sista Serena Williams, well, they did their best. They've been holding it in how whites have been treating our first African-American president, until they couldn't any longer, and just exploded.

They wanted to take it out on the first white that held the power of white privilege, a white line judge, and an award that should have, by all accounts, gone to Beyonce. Everybody knew she had the best damn video in the history of videos.

Now, y'all noticed that Sista Williams didn't actually ram that effin' tennis ball down the judge's throat as she threatened, and Beyonce made it up to the white performer, by giving her some of her acceptance time so that she could thank her left-out fans and staff.

You see: Not all of us are rude, insensitive, and boorish, and Sista Williams exercised some commonsense restraint, even though she still lost the match.

And you had to notice: Ms Williams clapped Ms Clijster on the shoulder, and congratulated her for the hollow victory she was given, because of the one point she lost, penalized for unsportsmanlike behavior, which gave Kim Clijster the match.

Take some measure of delight in knowing: your attacks on President Obama are causing us to lose our ever loving minds, just as his being the most powerful black man in the world, and leader of the greatest country in the world, is blowing yours.