Managed to cook and eat soup and keep most of it in my body. So things might be looking up. Still, I’m mostly in bed. And other than that I’ve been watching a DVD of “The League.”
At any rate, over the years here Billy Jack has played a significant role in the tenor of this site, so no archive dump would be complete without posting a few examples of Billy’s attempts to draw from his own mystical font of native wisdom to teach others the ways of the eagle. Or the crow. Or the buffalo, or some shit. Particulars matter little. It’s the thought that counts.
Grieving Mom Cindy Sheehan and 70s Kung-fu expert and counterculture icon Billy Jack discuss strategies for twenty-first century anti-war activism while ostensibly maintaining their commitments to fighting global terrorism, 21
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“I’ve gotta tell you, Billy, I am totally psyched about the next round of Crawford protests—especially now that I have my own little parcel of earth from which to speak Truth to Power. I feel like a new-age Moses almost, an oracle chosen by the universe to present its message of love and peace!
“Of course, we did, unfortunately, run into a few permit problems, so we have no running water or electricity. Which means generators, tents, and Port-A-Potties. But hey, at least it’s not a ditch this time, right?—and besides, having to rough it a bit will recall, for many comrades-in-arms hoping to end neocon and Zionist aggression, those heady days of Woodstock, or Hoffman and the Yippies.* |
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“Well, either that—or the rows of filthy, overstuffed Port-A-Potties might remind people just how completely full of shit your whole enterprise has become.
Which, that would be kinda ironic, wouldn’t it?”* |
Democratic Presidential Hopeful Barack Obama and 70s Kung-fu expert and counterculture icon Billy Jack discuss the social construction of race and how it obtains in the current electoral climate
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“You know what really irks me, counterculture icon Billy Jack? The fact that there are those who still question my ‘authenticity’ as a Black man. This despite the color of my skin — a burden with which I was born and, through hard work and some Great Society mau-mauing, I have since overcome in this, your Benighted States of America. Then there’s the inconvenient fact that my father was a bona fide Black man, something that those who think me somehow less of a brother are quick to bracket.
And that’s not even to mention my crossroads experience at the politico-spiritual nexus that is Black Liberation Theology — an experience that, though it certainly hasn’t shaped my thinking in any important way, just as my father’s religion never did, should nevertheless count for something with those true people of faith who wish to follow Christ’s collectivist message of redemption through the state. Unless these folks are white, of course, in which case, they wouldn’t understand. Like my grandmother, for instance. God bless her beautiful and kindly cracker-ass soul. | |
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“I hear you, O! I mean, shit, man. People have been questioning my authenticity for years, and it’s like, ‘uh, Kemosabe? — do you not see the fucking hat…?’
“Not only that, but I have a nightstand full of feathers and turquoise jewelry that would make Pocahontas get all moist in her native nethers. So, you know, who’s the poser now, Pale Faces…? |
University of Colorado Ethnic Studies professor and anti-American firebrand Ward Churchill and 70s Kung-fu expert and counterculture icon Billy Jack discuss the vicissitudes of identity politics and the latest attempt by Whitey to stick it to the (faux) Native American truth teller
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“So the ‘council’ has spoken, and I’m to be bounced from my truthiness podium for what these Eurocentric pricks are calling ‘deliberate’ acts of academic misconduct. How ironic, huh? For years we’ve been arguing that ‘race’ is a social construct, but then when somebody like me puts those theories to the real world test, the university freakin’ caves, man. Like the cowardly white racist bigots that they’ve always secretly been.”* | |
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“I hear you. It’s getting to the point where a fake Indian can’t even buy a measure of reflected glory these days.
“On the bright side, nobody can take away your years of opening young minds to the idea that people like ‘you’ have been systemically persecuted by an imperialist hegemon, and that they are to blame—whether consciously or not. In fact, only you can take away that guilt by admitting your true heritage. And how likely is that? Besides, to give them the gift of self-loathing only to take it back as part of some weak mea culpa? No. If there’s one thing Ward Churchill is not, it’s, well…an Indian giver…”* |
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See also, Callimachus, Pirate Ballerina, Allah, and Malkin.
Grieving Mom Cindy Sheehan and 70s Kung-fu expert and counterculture icon Billy Jack discuss strategies for twenty-first century anti-war activism while ostensibly maintaining their commitments to fighting global terrorism
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“You’re absolutely right, Billy: the best thing we can do to fight terrorism is outlaw poverty, transnational corporations, and wars —and convince people of the need to rise up against a sneaky neocon agenda that is bringing us closer to doomsday and demand we extricate ourselves from the affairs of Araby, even if that means rethinking our support of the Zionists, who have themselves terrorized the Palestinians for half a century.” | |
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“Right. But don’t forget the part where we teach the Muslims Kung-fu and snake handling. And the Hopi Indian vision quest ritual. After all, it’s that kind of attention to detail that sets my plan apart from the ineffectual crap, say, Michael Moore or Dennis Kucinich is peddling.”* |
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(h/t Colossus Blog)
University of Colorado Ethnic Studies professor and anti-American firebrand Ward Churchill and 70s Kung-fu expert and counterculture icon Billy Jack muse on the nature of art and referentiality
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“What people don’t understand is that we Native Americans think of ‘art’ as a communal gift. So the idea that any one person can actually claim ownership over a piece of art is as alien to our culture as Moo-shu pork or ceramic angels, and about as ludicrous, to our way of thinking, as trying to claim ownership over the concept of beauty itself.”* | |
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“I hear you. I stole this hat, too.”* |
Lame duck CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather explains his still untenable position on the Bush TANG story to 70s Kung-fu expert and counterculture icon Billy Jack
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“Sure, Mary may have been a bit too keen to put perfume on a possum. And she’s feeling it in the seat today, believe me. But I’ll bet you three jackrabbits to a tar pit that the facts we reported were dead on. Dead on.”* |
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“Whatever. Can I make a suggestion, Dan? Suspenders are so bourgeois. You should try denim. And one of these cool native American hats with the tribal band design.
“Chicks dig native American hats, man. Dig them like a trained pig digs truffles.” |
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update: Ace has more.
I’m still not convinced that the armadillo isn’t Billy Jack’s spirit form.
Wow! Billy Jack foresaw the OWS movement (c/f his “full of shit” joke) when Cindy freaking Sheehan was in the public eye. Who knew?
We had the actual Billy Jack (Tom Mclaughlin, I think?) visit at my high school back in the day. He got a whole page in teh yearbook.
I remember thinking,”Billy Jack is really, really short.”
Wow! Billy Jack foresaw the OWS movement… Who knew?
I dunno. Hippies have been living in the filth and fucking each other over in Utopian delusions for as long as there have been hippies. Doesn’t take much of a seer to predict the Woodstock crowd would go all Woodstock.
What I took from our little flashback was that for as stupid and futile and shallow as the Mother Sheehan Experience was back in the day, at least she and hers didn’t shit where they slept. I’d never have expected a protest to make Mother Sheehan look fair and balanced. And during a Progg administration, too!
“Go ahead and hate your neighbor, go ahead and cheat a friend. Do it in the name of Heaven, you can justify it in the end…”
Someone’s learned his lessons well.
Sure, sure, you talk to your little Indian pal all the freakin’ time… but when’s the last time you called Billy Joel for his take on current events?
Ward Churchill has a Che hat and a gun. Billy Jack has a Billy Jack hat. Who’s right?
Billy Jack. Turns out Ward Churchill is Native American only in the same way Trixie the pole dancer is – by injection. Then Ward’s just another white guy with a gun, ipso facto wrong, and therefore Billy Jack must be correct.
Angela Davis is also a correct answer-er.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/alec_baldwin_thrown_off_flight_at_ikgro0tlAWEveH4IMoa4YK Schadenfreud.