I AM BILL

Editorial note: my previous "I AM JOE" post seems to have struck a chord, and possibly a nerve or two. As one new fan writes:

"I think it's hilarious you wingnuts want to embrace this wifebeating tax cheat non-plumber as your new populist poster boy. Funny I didn't see your concern when the Murdoch media was trying to destroy Bill Ayers' life."

You make an excellent point, T.S.! Why should us flag-humping reactionaries get all the good flesh-and-blood lumpenproles to rally behind? So, in preemptive compliance with the coming Fairness Doctrine, please allow me to ladle up another helping of righteous populist indignation on behalf of another lovable everyman who's gotten the shaft from the media for daring to speak up. Bumper stickers coming soon. 

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Every time I turn on the internet these days, it seems like another right wing blogger is digging up more baloney on Professor Bill Ayers. Apparently these people would rather talk about Bill Ayers' passionate youthful rambunctiousness than the issues that really matter to us, like Sarah Palin's shoe bill. Well, I've got a message for you, Mister Google cache McCarthy fascist: I'm mad as H-E-double sippy straws, and I'm not going to take it any more. No longer will I remain silent while you smear and slur this great America-hating American with his own quotes. Hear me now: when you mess with Bill Ayers, you're messing with me.

Because I AM BILL.

I AM BILL. I am the everyday forgotten little guy in your neighborhood, the quiet anarcho-syndicalist family man who gets up early and punches the clock at the local state university, writing the manifestos and polemics and grant proposals that keep America humming. I'm just doing my job, and all I ask in return is a little respect. And tenure. And Chicago Citizen of the Year awards. And two graduate assistants to grade exams for Practicum in Imperialist Racist Hegemony 311, because I'm teaching two sections this semester. Also, a sabbatical to Italy next summer would be nice.

I AM BILL. I grew up in a simple little gated community just like yours, with white picket fences and where all the aux pairs and gardeners know your name. When my dad came home from a hard day's work as a CEO, he was never too tired to help me with my homework or tousle my hair for winning the Lake Forest Academy essay contest on Hegelian Dialectics. Yes, he was a simpleminded bourgeois technocrat of the capitalist war machine, but he made sure I got the tuition and tutors and sailing lessons and allowance I needed to make it on my own. I wish he was still alive so I could tell him how much I really planned to kill him last.

I AM BILL. I work with my hands, grizzled and calloused from years on a non-ergonomic keyboard. Maybe I don't know pipe wrenches, but I know pipe bombs, and I've built them right there in my communal kitchen and I've watched with pride as they've offed a couple of pigs. Sure, maybe I've made a few mistakes with wiring or detonator timing and it ends up killing a couple of comrades. But you know what? I get up, dust myself off, and get right back to the drawing board. Because when it comes to international Maoist revolution, quitters never win and winners never quit.

I AM BILL. I love traveling the highways and byways of this great, puke-inducing country we call America, visiting its police stations and ROTC buildings and legislative halls. And when the pigs finally catch up with me and dad hires a legal team to get me off on a technicality, it lets me know that yes, Bill, you can go home again. 

I AM BILL. I may have started small. But I still have a crazy plan that one day I will make it big and finally plunge this danged country of ours into a bloody cataclysmic race war. And if you think you can stand in the way of my dream, or escape my escape-proof reeducation death camps, well, then you don't know me.

I AM BILL. I'm still married my to my college sweetheart, and we believe in family values. Especially Manson Family values. After all these years she still hands me my lunchbox at the door every morning, which she has packed with a chocolate kiss and a tiny pinch of Semtex from her hope chest. I can't imagine where I'd be without this woman and her law school salary. Because no matter what I accomplish in this world, this beautiful, insane bitch will always be the real psychopath in the house.

I AM BILL. I believe in upholding America's great traditions, like the Days of Rage and Wounded Knee the Haymarket Riots. Call me sentimental, but my heart still swells with pride whenever I see a Boy Scout color guard parading Old Glory down the street, and a young anarchist rips it away from the those fascists and starts it on fire.

I AM BILL. I fervently believe in educatiing all our children, whether they are Black like Mumia, or Asian like Pol Pot, or Palestinian like Sirhan Sirhan, or recovering whiteys like me. Children are our future. They need funding for programs in aboriginal physics and political consciousness, so they can rebuild the collectivist agrarian labor camp society that once made this country great.

I AM BILL. Unlike Joe the Plumber, I pay my taxes. Because I know that until the inevitable violent overthrow of the dystopian AmeriKKKan nightmare, taxes are the necessary price we all must pay for critical government services like roads, and ACORN, and my university pension. Plus according to my attorney it's harder to beat the rap on tax evasion.

I AM BILL. I love the Cubs. There's nothing I enjoy more than sitting in the grandstands of Wrigley Field sipping a cold one, dreaming of the day when my beloved Chicago People's Cubbies bring home the Castro trophy at the World Series of Socialist Peace and Beisbol. And, after the Yanquis are executed during 7th inning stretch, there will be free nationalized People's Budweiser for everybody. As we Cub fans say, "wait 'til next year!" 

I AM BILL. I believe in helping young people -- especially those who show potential as innocuous, non-threatening front men. I work quietly behind the scenes helping them get a foot in the door, arranging entry-level jobs on foundation boards, hosting their political events, ghostwriting their memoirs. I don't do it for the glory. I do it for the quiet satisfaction of knowing that someday these young people might just grow up to be the vanguard of the permanent worker's revolution that will destroy the system from within, and that's all the thanks I need. 

I AM BILL. I hate AmeriKKKa. Which you know, if you aren't blinded by false consciousness, means I actually love America -- because dissent is the highest form of patriotism, and bombs are the highest form of dissent. And if you don't like it, you can lump it, you fascist AmeriKKKa-loving America hater! America, hate it or leave it!

I AM BILL.

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UPDATE: Yay! Merchandise! Courtesy Matt from Veer to the Right. Print it off and display at your next Obama rally / Weather Underground reunion / university awards banquet.

And Patrick Flynn (who did the Shepard Fairey-style propaganda Joe in the Joe the Plumber post) offers this handsome poster for your faculty lounge refrigerator.