Two guys who’d been hired to give out free tickets to Calgary’s Stampede (their rodeo, except to call it a rodeo is like calling the Olympics a sporting event, it’s *big*) approached an American couple and asked if the couple had been to Stampede yet. Upon getting no response, they looked at each other puzzled, then asked the question again, thinking maybe the couple hadn’t understood.
The American man then rudely snarled, “Gentlemen, I have no need to talk with you, goodbye”, and moved away, staying between the ticket-givers and his wife. The ticket-givers looked puzzled, and then moved on to find someone else who wanted tickets and had some bit of courtesy, unlike those rude Americans.
End of story, except… well: Here is the photograph of the American man in the above story:
Yes, we’re talkinga bout Officer Walt Wawra of Kalamazoo, Michigan, who was upset, upset I say, that in Canada he wasn’t allowed to pack his gun and one bullet to deal with those pesky ticket-givers if they’d been packing heat instead of Stampede tickets.
Well, we know one person who doesn’t have big clangin’ brass ones, and that’s Officer Walt Wawra of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Marshmallows, marshmallows I say. Miniature marshmallows. That is all.
– Badtux the WTF Penguin
The Calgary Herald article includes some comments — apparently from our citizens — about how ol’ Walt probably did fear, based on his experience.
Hogwash.
If a twenty-year cop is nervous when he’s approached, and needs his gun to feel safe, he shouldn’t be travelling outside his house, never mind to other countries.
Sweet baby Jeebus, I’m glad I’m out of law enforecement. What a buncha WATBs the cops are these days.
What does WATB stand for? Whiny-ass teeny-babies?
Close. According to UrbanDictionary.com, it’s “whiny ass titty baby.” Definition includes: “refers to right-wingers who routinely bully others but whine vociferously at the mildest criticism directed their way.”
Coincidentally, on the day I read this post, there was a letter to the editor along the same theme in our local free newspaper. It was in reaction to an editorial about one of the many mass shootings in the U.S.
It’s short, so I’ll re-type it here. The headline is:
TEXAN TOURISTS SHOCK WITH GUN TALK
I’ve a brief tale of my own. But I want to set that up by recalling a song by Linda Ronstadt called “Back in the USA.” In my own little (and true) story from four months ago, I’m leaning on the railing in Coal Harbour talking to a couple Texans attending an electrical union conference over at the Bayshore.
Up pops a harbour seal and I tell them a little about them and the one leans into the other, grins and says how easy it would be to pick off the harbour seal with his rifle. The seal is nothing more than a target to these “good old boys,” something to measure up against their great, exalted prowess and skill and courage with weapons. With “heroes” like those two, there would be no harbour seals left anywhere in Burrard Inlet but most likely the single floating gas barge we have would become an entire floating refinery!
Well I’m so very, very glad I ain’t livin’ in the USA.
Paul Beckett
Vancouver
In terms of brand strategy, the U.S. has re-branded itself as the land of the gun-slinging psychopaths. Uncle Sam has been replaced in the minds of the world population with Yosemite Sam. Not a good image…
I say that if you don’t like guns because you think this is a peaceful world then there is no need for you to own them. But I like my guns, and my right to pack them most places here. And even places they say I can’t pack them, if they don’t see them they don’t know I’m packing.
It’s not just America, the whole world is a laughingstock, it’s just a big fucking circus on this fucking rock.
An unplanned consequence of my mid-life crisis was to move abroad 15 years ago. I’m increasing glad that I did. I have health insurance. I feel physically safer here than I ever did in the States. There aren’t the gun-toting crazies we have in the States who slaughter innocent people because 1) they are truly crazy or 2) they are just racist extremists.
I know that there are still good and sane people in the U.S. but I don’t know if there are enough of us. There seem to be too many Americans that are crazy, mean, nasty, arrogant, insulting, uneducated, unthinking bullies.
I no longer recognize the country that I left and increasingly despair for its future. I think there will be blood in the future because things cannot continue forever as they are. My only consolation is that, eventually, the pendulum will swing back as evil periods historically have not lasted forever, I am convinced, however, that I won’t live to see the end of this current period and I feel sorry for the world that today’s younger generations will inherit.
Feels sweet to be an American on the outside looking back in, eh? I feel a bit of guilt, because my wife and I grew up during America’s greatest days, and we jumped ship while the gittin’ was good. It’s like going to a party and bolting before it’s time to pick up the empty beer bottles.
We would have stayed, because we acknowledge there are those sane people who need others to stand with them. But unlike the days of my youth, there are not enough sane ones with power. The sociopaths are in charge, and they’ll run the car off the cliff just to see what it feels like to fly through the air. And they set a bad example for the people who are easily led by example, the ones with no internal moral compass to guide them on their own.
So it’s like the party is winding down, the beer is even running out at the stores (Peak Oil) and there’s a forest fire coming over the hill (climate change). The partiers are getting surly, smashing beer bottles and waving them around threateningly, because they can sense that something’s gone terribly wrong. Meanwhile, the people who staged the party (only they had already sold the house where it was thrown) are sitting in a hot tub in a secret room downstairs, sipping champagne, watching the antics via surveillance camera, with plans to slip out through a hidden passage to a limousine that’s fueled up and ready to take them to another nice party in a place that the upstairs guests don’t even know exists.
“Après moi, le déluge”.
Sadly, I think your description is all too accurate. I think it also increasingly likely that I won’t return to the States, not even for a visit. One other hope is that the collateral damage we will inflict on the rest of the world can be minimized. However, even if it can’t, I prefer being here rather than there.
In terms of brand strategy, the U.S. has re-branded itself as the land of the gun-slinging psychopaths. Uncle Sam has been replaced in the minds of the world population with Yosemite Sam.
Too true, Bukko.
I had the chance, back during the Bushevik regime, to head north to Canada. I didn’t take it because of concern about the kittehs and other issues. Now it’s too late, I’m at an age where nobody wants me — not other nations, not advertisers, not investors looking to be angel funders, nada. Sighhhhh….