Closets and Other Places to Hide

Amy Goodman was in town yesterday, the village of Mesilla, to be exact. Galoop galay. For the Border Book Festival. Ms. Goodman's appearance was in no way connected to the 15th anniversary of the Festival and the 15th anniversary of her Democracy Now! Ms. Goodman is on a nation-wide book tour. She admitted her staff had looked for book festivals to schedule her 'whistle-stops.'

Ms. Goodman made some interesting anecdotal points about democracy and some known and lesser-known historical events that have had an effect on our lives. She didn't know it, but once there were two sailors in uniform riding a Greyhound bus through Virginia and North Carolina at night. One sat in the front of the bus while his brother-in-arms had to sit in the back. The driver was obviously Klan-sympathetic for at one point he made a black woman move further back or he wouldn't move the bus. It was lamp-black dark on those old two-lane highways back then. I was scared of the night-riding Klan and did not speak.

I won't use the 'L' word, since the Republicans have twisted it and perverted it, to describe the crowd of about 200 people packed into the small room at the Community Center. I will use 'Closet Bugs.' It was an obvious older crowd whom I suspect would mistakenly considered themselves as 'more open and intellectual' than the average Wal-Mart shopper.

They came out of their usual cloister and closets to cheer and hoot with glee at Ms. Goodman's appearance and words. An obvious welcomed interruption to their flaccid lives of Christian privilege on a sunny Sunday morning. The Closet Bugs are the usual gray-haired older white crowd who never publicly speak up about things they know are wrong. Their life in the Status Quo is just too comfortable. There was the usual 'intellectual crowd' from the local NM State University who usually remain silent. The minorities of color were pathetically underrepresented in the audience. As was the under-21 age group from the university or high schools.

Before the show a Closet Bug made it a point to harange me about my separation of religion and government shirt, but did say she liked my wife's shirt: "Well-behaved women seldom make history." The Closet Bug's point escaped us.