I am so glad I've lived long enough to see the FBI make a collective ass of itself yet again. Gosh, how we've missed J. Edgar Hoover and his weird nutsiness, peaking as it did with his tape recording under the mattress of Martin Luther King, Nobel Prize winner and one of the half dozen most significant persons of the 20th century. A fed official who can make that big a mistake is a dream come true for all comedians.
But Hoover's less colorful present successor is now coming close to the zaniness of Hoover. I don't know the present jerk's name (he is very uncolorful indeed) but he and/or his Bureau have decided that some rap band is a public enemy and that its followers are "gangsters". This reminds me of Putin jailing those cute girl singers. Haven't these police-state guys got anythimg better to do? Like stopping the bombing at the Boston Marathon or at the Volgograd train station? Both of these terrorist attacks were directed at athletic events. Wouldn't it be more manly of the FBI and Putin to protect athletes than to harass singers and their followers?
That's where the Juggalos come in. In case you didn't know, they are the followers of the Insane Clown Posse. Apparently they wear tattoos. Wow, what a crime! And several Juggalos have done some bad stuff. I think, however, that their worse act is picking Juggallos as a name because I can't manage to spell it consistently. But hey. These Jug guys and the Insane Clowns are real Americans.
We know that because they have just filed a lawsuit against the FBI for harassment and a bunch of other stuff. That's the American way! File a lawsuit! If I had some money I'd contribute to the insanity of this whole thing by at least sending the Jugs and the Clowns enough to buy their lawyer a sandwich.
We used to get wire-taped all the time by the FBI. And followed. Even into an I-Hop. In that Nixon era nothing was sacred. Not even pancakes. But I didn't sue the FBI. When one of them wanted to interview me about an anti-Nixon demonstration I had organized and wanted the names of the labor leaders involved, I did two things. I said it was too noisy to hear him where I was and that I'd call him right back. Then I called the president of the county bar association. He was a great help. "If we could get the Los Siete off, we can get you sprung!" (See postscript below for who the hell Los Siete were.) The smarta_ _ lawyer was laughing. So I told him he could mind my six kids until I got out of jail. He stopped laughing. But an idea had been born!
Next I called the FBI guy back and said I could meet him at my house in 20 minuted and he could hold the baby while I fixed dinner for the other five kids and, at the same time, we did the interview.
He never showed up.
This week a bunch of aged anti-Vietnam old darlings are confessing to their youthful burglarizing of an FBI office during the Vietnam war so as to steal documents showing the USA was doing bad things in Southeast Asia and to American protestors. The old dissidents used a crowbar to break in. Kinda crude. But they've been smart enough to lay low until the statue of limitations has run out.
I wonder. Has the statute of limitations run out on inviting an FBI agent to hold your baby under false pretenses? Is laughing at the FBI a crime?
And why did the FBI almost arrest Groucho Marx in 1968? Tune in soon for "Flee, Groucho! Flee!" And tips on how to spot an FBI guy or an undercover cop.
P.S. Los Siete were a group of six Latinos brought to trial in San Francisco for allegedly shooting a police man to death. "Siete" means seven, but one of the guys eluded capture. Los Seis were acquited. Thus the attorney errs on two grounds in calling them "the Los Siete, the other mistake being that "los" means"the". Theirs was a cause celebre among the many celebrated causes of the 1970s, like Angela Davis being on trial for having all that hair. These were the watershed years when police departments and other things were about to change from all-white male to something else entirely. Oh, baby, we have come a long, long way! We who laughed then are still laughing!
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