Get a BLM lawn sign… Bevin’s tinfoil factory

I see your favorite Louisville pastor and college president made it into The New York Times. All right, because he got pulled over. But still. You must be seething with jealousy.

Not particularly. Whenever I see Kevin Cosby’s name in print, I’m always disappointed that he’s described as a pastor rather than a charlatan. Journalism standards everywhere are pitiful.

Maybe he’ll have learnt an important lesson about the realities of life outside his little bubble.

Perhaps. You’ve got a “Black Lives Matter” sign in the front garden, haven’t you?

Indeed I do, thanks to the wife, who insisted on it, despite my reservations. Glad we have it now.

Because it signals your virtue to any passerby? Come on, what other purpose does it serve? Does nothing for the people whose lives you claim matter so much. It just gives you the opportunity to deliver a sanctimonious lecture about how right you are, and how wrong they are.

I appreciate you giving me the opportunity. There are a bunch of reasons having that sign is important, to me at least: First off, solidarity matters — and right now there’s not enough of it. Politicians, including Cosby, because that’s what he is, think nobody really gives a shit because they drive around supposedly liberal parts of town and see one sign per street. The truth is that lots of people do care about the disproportionately violent treatment of African-Americans by the police, but many are nervous about showing it. If pols drove around white neighborhoods and saw mass evidence of support for BLM, they’d be far more inclined to do something. So, solidarity, for one.

Probably true. But then you live in The Highlands, where milquetoast, white, liberal hypocrisy is a way of life. I’d expect no less. What else?

Second, luck. In that our BLM sign reminds me every time I see it of the enormous role luck has played in my life and in my comfort. I can tell my children to trust Old Bill. I can tell my children that they have nothing to fear from them. That’s not a result of my efforts — it’s a result of the luck I had being born to middle-class white parents. Black parents have a very different experience of this country, and acknowledging my good fortune gives me a better understanding of the struggle people who haven’t been so fortunate face.

Fair play, that’s two half-decent reasons. But come on, it’s there just to boost your obnoxiousness, which hardly needs a boost at all. You’re a wind-up merchant, and that sign winds people up.

We did get a passive-aggressive, anonymous note through the door a while ago, suggesting we remove it. Sort of frightening, sort of thrilling. The thing is, I enjoy the lecturing, so if anyone wants to ask why I’ve got that sign, I’ll happily tell them, especially any bell-end who tries telling me that all lives matter. There’s a binary choice in the words “Black Lives Matter” — and it’s not the colour black. The opposite is not “All Lives Matter,” because all lives obviously do matter. The opposite of “Black Lives Matter” is “Black Lives Don’t Matter.”

It’s funny that you should choose an interpretation that supports your own opinion. But come on. Having that sign in your garden, in fact, achieves fuck-all.

Right now, maybe that’s true. It’s not just in white neighbourhoods where signs are few and far between. It’s the same in black neighbourhoods, too. Everyone who gives a shit needs to step up. People like Cosby — someone whose fortune relies on his willingness to kowtow to institutionalised white supremacy — make it harder. He’s typical of all conservatives of all races: “It hasn’t happened to me, so if it has happened to you, it must be your fault.” Maybe he’ll change his tune now that he’s come close to experiencing what so many other black people go through on the regular, although it is comic that his getting pulled over is what it takes. I mean, nary a word from him about Botham Jean in Dallas. Yet you’d bet your bottom dollar that if an off-duty black copper forced his way into a white woman’s home and shot her to death, there’d be zero hesitation in charging him with murder. But no, Cosby got pulled over!

It reminds me of that “Simpsons” line about lots of people getting shot — but, until now, none were important. For Kevin Cosby, only he’s important, and everyone else needs to make nice with the crackers to keep it that way. You’ve almost persuaded me to invest in one of those signs.

Right. And unlike Bevin’s investment in a tinfoil factory, this one won’t turn into a total dud and leave you $1.5 billion short, either.

Farcical, and puts his blind arrogance on glaring display: “Government subsidies are unworkable socialism that always fail — unless we call it a private investment and it’s done by me!” What a complete tosser. What has he spent on that? Fifteen bar? It’ll go tits up, just you watch, and in typical style of the party of personal responsibility, he’ll shirk all personal responsibility.

If only it was a bell factory that the government was rebuilding for him after it burnt to the ground — and that he failed to buy insurance, eh? That’s the sort of sweet business deal he understands. To be serious for a second, if he loses a single red cent on that aluminium plant he should be impeached.

He should have been impeached when he did it, never mind if and when it goes pear-shaped. Braidy Industries? Brady Bunch Industries, more like. And they completely hoodwinked our self-important fool of a governor. I mean, they’re talking about needing to crowdfund the final four hundred thou. I don’t know much about investment in massive aluminium plants, but I know Michael Mouse when I see him.

We’ll be accused of hoping for it to fail, you know.

Nothing wrong with that. I hope all grifters fail.

This article appears in September 26, 2018.