22 January 2017
Drunk chicks can call each other cunts and sluts and bitches all night long and never a tender feeling gets hurt. Don’t you dare, you brute, or you’ll never lay a filthy paw on her silky drawers again!
The brothers can call each other coon and spook and jigaboo all afternoon, it’s all in good fun. Now let Jackie Chan show up, smile broadly, and ask, “What up, muh nigga?” and by golly do the hijinks ensue!
Whether it’s athletes in the locker room, or cops on the beat, or nurses on the nightshift, every cadre develops its grips and shiboleths that say “It’s okeh. I’m one of you guys. I’m allowed to talk this way.”
With GIs, it’s “chickenhawk.” As offensive as it is to watch civilian politicians on TV drone on about America’s great sacrifices overseas, it is almost worse to see non-vets and non-GIs wearing camo-print leisurewear as their way of “supporting the troops.” However, just as a paraplegic can be educated about baseball, so too can folks outside the military family speak knowledgeably about foreign policy and use of force and the tragedy versus atrocity of collateral damage. That’s not what bugs me. In its proper pejorative sense, “chickenhawks” generally lack coherent arguments, personal experience, or years of scholarship to back up their cant. They seem far too often to be proponents of, “Let’s you and him fight.”
So, while I have no respect for chickenhawks, not every non-vet, non-GI proponent of war (involving someone else’s kid) is necessarily a chickenhawk. But just about anyone I hear in the street, on the job, or in a bar saying “We oughta just go over there and kick Ahmed’s (or Ivan’s or Fritz’ or Jose’s) ass and take his oil (or vodka or schnapps or tequila.)” probably IS.
So, unless you’re a vet yourself, or still in uniform (casual salute), don’t let me hear you saying “chickenhawk” about an otherwise anonymous war booster unless you can do it in an original or amusing fashion.
You’re on our turf here, and we’re sensitive about that shit.
SSgt Gene, USAF
Chameleon Boy, Saturn Girl, Phantom Girl, Colossal Boy, Gigi Cusimano, Cosmic Boy, Triplicate Girl (all depicted by Steve Lightle), Shvaugn Erin, and Jan (Element Lad) Arrah (both depicted by Colleen Doran & Al Gordon), are all properties of Detective Comics and Warner Communications. Their images are reproduced by Piracy Press for purposes of analysis and scholarship. If anything, their use here constitutes free advertisement for DC‘s properties at the considerable expense of Piracy Press and Greigh Area Associates.
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