A group of laborers who refuse to be paid in cash have attacked a community of space robots with purple vacuum cleaner heads.
I’m sure I got some of that right.
Less goofily: in college I read a book called Extraordinary Groups: An Examination of Unconventional Groups
that covered, in the chapter with the greatest depth, the Rom community. Not cool how they’ve been treated. Their common name, itself an inaccurate slur (inaccurate because they are not from Egypt; slur because it means, in Europe, “y’aint from ’round here, are ya?”), carries connotations of thievery and fraud, and can be used pejoratively in casual conversation, frequently by people who don’t know they are doing it. They survived persecution, marginalization, and, finally, murder in the gas chambers of the Third Reich, but (AFAIK) no one has built a museum for them yet.
So, please, no riots, OK? No attacks. No “gypsy cabs”, nor having someone “gyp” you. In a sense, they are where Jews were before WWII, an allowed target of hate. We needn’t hate.
But, you know, keep your wallet in your front pocket. Just to be safe.
The book: as of this writing, there’s one for a penny. It’s a good book. You can afford a penny:
Sat, 20 Dec 2008 02:48:37 -0600
Under news, philosophy, politics
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