Ramones: We're A Happy Family, We're A Happy World

Pope Benedict XVI just apologized for pissing off Muslims during his lecture at the University of Regensburg on September 12, 2006. During the lecture, he had quoted from a historical text positing that Islam spreads the faith mostly by the sword. A rational, peaceful faith must prevail, the Pope had suggested. His comments have already led to several random acts of violence around the world.

Germans are not known in general for their sensitivity, but as one person noted yesterday (who shall remain nameless for fear of retribution by fanatics), “Muslims can be so thin-skinned.” Not only Muslims, of course.

When I worked at Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, one of our authors, Clyde Edgerton, published Raney, a novel that lightly satirizes Baptists (he was one at the time if memory serves, and perhaps still is), and was promptly fired from the Baptist-led school where he taught.

People around the world are always rioting over the dumbest things – some pigs run by Muslims and they set cars on fire; some cows wander in the wrong place and Hindus set a mosque on fire. Catholics walk in the wrong part of Belfast and Protestants lob rocks at them, or vice versa. And Jews are hounded everywhere, except when they’re shooting and firing rockets at rock-throwing Palestinians. Heaven help us when someone draws a cartoon depicting whatever -- death to free speech! Hang 'em high! Stone 'em! Off with their heads! Off with their hands! Yee-haw!

Also, the Pope neglected to mention the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the conquest of the Americas by sword and cannon. The mass conversion to Catholicism of Aztecs and all the other peoples encountered there was hardly a peaceful process. There was not much cheek-turning going on. There hardly ever is.

Religion very often goes hand in hand with violence when practiced by humans – obviously. Jesus gets crucified, Gandhi gets shot. And so it goes. We’re a happy family, we’re a happy world. We Are the World, after all. Collectively, we suck. Can we do any better, ever?

Or as the Ramones put it in Rocket to Russia (1977):

We're a happy family
We're a happy family
We're a happy family
Me mom and daddy

Sitting here in Queens
Eating refried beans
We're in all the magazines
Gulpin' down thorazines

We ain't got no friends
Our troubles never end
No Christmas cards to send
Daddy likes men

Daddy's telling lies
Baby's eating flies
Mommy's on pills
Baby's got the chills

I'm friends with the President
I'm friends with the Pope
We're all making a fortune
Selling Daddy's dope



Today's Rune: The Self.

Peace be with you!