This was a picture sent to me in one of those forwards; the ones that frantically spread like the proverbial wildfire we all hate. The minute I saw it I knew it was doctored, but then something inside me wanted to make sure. It's pretty obvious that this could not be real; that the ACLU would be all over it if it were, but, something was still very unsettling about this image. I, like any other schmuck, forwarded this to a bunch of my friends - those people you know won't judge you stupid for sending this out and will tell you what they think of it; while not letting their own political/ideological beliefs be fanatically dethroned.
Farooq, endowed with the super-abilities to articulate his unadulterated thoughts on politics and policies said: "I'm also positive it's doctored, but its still very sinister. And by sinister, I mean the effect the creators are going for is definitely achieved. It's smart of them not to pick some seedy, shady, scruffy looking desi. They pick a fairly harmless looking guy and, by doing so, encourage you to question the intentions of people falling OUTSIDE the stereotype of potentially dangerous Muslims. Check out the way he is looking at you in the poster. Taken by itself, it'd just be a regular boring picture. But armed with all the rhetoric underneath, its capable of being a little creepy. Its basically shouting out 'trust no one'."
Naiara, with her undying patience and incessant requirement to be politically correct said (after assuring me that she, as a frequent MTA user, knew this to be a fake): "One possible explanation is that someone might have designed it with the objective of drawing attention to the potential racial profiling interpretation that the original ad might have on certain prong minds (the original add says: "if you see something, say something" and has the picture of an abandoned item under the metro seat). It can even be the case that someone has been the victim of racial profiling based on the ad, but I have never read or heard of it happening."
I think that this forward was a little bit of both; sinister yet sarcastic. In a time like this when something as meaningless as a cartoon sketch or a South Park episode can get us frazzled (not that I think such frazzlement is warranted), someone thought it in their malicious right to create and spread something like this. Mind you, desi's are innately stupid so we'll buy this junk at first sight. I just hope it doesn't get in the hands of someone like Zaid Hamid (or maybe his zombie-esque minions are the ones that created it) so that they can use it to accent their beliefs that the world is out to get them. "Them": not just Muslims, but Pakistani-Muslims because they're the worst kind.
It could also be something intended to be sarcastic pun at the way brown-folk in general are being treated (considering that most Pakistani's are now being driven to claim Indian heritage, uf, sacrilege). Either way, its uncalled for because it's messing with my head. I was left there thinking "maybe?" and I've got plenty else to be thinking about right now. It just goes to show the sad state of affairs of the world at large (and the lack of caffeine in my system at that hour), when we'll believe (or at least question/ponder, if even for an instant) the legitimacy of something as absurd as this. I question my intelligence before I do anyone else, but it just leaves me thinking, if I could for a second be "doubeyew-tee-eff" about this, could someone, not educated and unaware of civil liberties and their importance in the Land of the Free, not take this to be real?
Sigh. What have we come to?
"I run to the Rock, please hide me..."
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