Fake noose? Catch the Frisby!
Political belief is not simply the holding of a position which pertains to a particular and partisan view of how society should be, it is also – more so now than ever – the expression of those beliefs. In today’s social-media-driven political agora, it ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it.
However, as Andrew Breitbart famously said, politics is downstream from culture, and it repays inspection to look not at the more recognisable political representatives of today’s two major and opposing political ideologies, but at two products of modern culture who have become embroiled in the political briar-patch, albeit so far without the happy results enjoyed by Brer Rabbit in the famous Uncle Remus tale (doubtless a non-book now) in which Brer Rabbit is thrown by Brer Fox into a briar patch. I won’t issue any spoilers.
So it is that I have gathered you here today to speak of the race-car driver and the troubadour. Bubba Wallace is a black American who drives a motor-car in something called ‘NASCAR’, the meaning of which is of no interest. It is basically stock-car racing for the rich. Dominic Frisby is rather a traditional, old-school Englishman who in addition to be being an entertaining and intelligent writer, also records satirical political songs. One has been all over the news, the other is little noticed outside a circle of fans and those ubiquitous opponents of his politics who need a hit of outrage-serotonin.
While Frisby will rarely be featured in the Leftist MSM, which is effectively all of the MSM, Bubba Wallace, in the USA, has had more air time for what he found in his garage, and speculation over not what it means but what it must be made to mean, than his exploits behind the wheel ever have or could have.
Mr. Wallace, on entering a garage containing one of his motor-cars, was dismayed to find what he described as a ‘noose’ hanging from the garage door. Like the well-oiled racing machine that it is, the enemedia revved into action and the outrage-ometer was soon well into the red. They are literally lynching black men.
When Bubba was confronted with the fact – loathsome word! – that the ‘noose’ was in fact a door-pull for the sliding garage shutters, he still cut up rough about the symbolism, although now stated that he did not believe the symbol was directed at him. Subtle, that. He is implying, of course, that the message goes out to all black men and women and all stations in between; we all comin’ fa you, boy!
As with Jussie Smollett, ‘beaten up’ by two white racists who turned out to be his Nigerian mates, the media have shuffled this story into the wings as much as possible. No noose is not good news.
Now, Mr. Frisby has also had something to say about the racial tension the flames of which are being fanned by a media always willing to serve their political margraves. He is a political animal, stating in his book Life After the State that he ‘believes in socialism without the state’, and going on to make an intelligent, coherent case for just that. But it is as a bard that we would like to sing Mr. Frisby’s praises.
Almost certainly known to the police after his paean to Brexit, 17 Million Fuck Offs, Mr. Frisby has exactly what Jeeves described Bertie Wooster as having, ‘a pleasant, light baritone’, and is also a wizard on stringed instruments of all hue. Fans of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band may also wish to inspect his Bowel Movement in A Minor. But his cultural input most recently is also a contribution to the great debate on race, which has overtaken physicists’ ‘Grand Unified Theory of Everything’ as the top-priority job for mankind, as well as a rip-roaring excuse for violence and gum-flapping. Do have a listen to I’m A White Man and I’m Sorry here.
Catch it now before it is popped down the YouTube memory hole.
Now, of course, we could have chosen any two media content providers to represent the chasm between the two opposing armies of the new global civil war. But Wallace and Frisby are examples of mindset, attitude, and the general affirmation of life in the two camps.
While the Left march about in ideological lockstep, jackboots swapped for Nikes, black power fists instead of a Nazi salute, the Right take refuge in humour. Where the Left scream, emote and accuse, the Right has a natural tendency to poke fun, deride and gently lampoon. And you can tattoo this on your arm; While not all intelligent people are funny, all funny people are intelligent.
And, as with all humour in dark times, with all the whistling past the graveyard and gallows humour, there is a tinge of sadness in Dominic’s lament in I Am a White Man and I’m Sorry, the tears of a clown;
So even though I didn’t do them,
I am the one that you should blame
For any kind of injury
At any time in history,
Even if in antiquity.
The fault so clearly lies with me.
I should be lynched,
Discredited and shamed.
Photo credit: Steve Best
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