Mourning Robin and Michael

I need Robin Williams right now. He'd be perfect for this.

Robin Williams was the genius of pushing propriety. He took swearing to an art form, manipulating the words that we associated with naughtiness to keep us off guard while he took the world around us and made us look at it in a way we might not have thought of before.

He showed us that we were okay with someone beating the shit out of an Arab, but make a joke about him being a cabbie and we'll hiss. He used stereotypes like a brush, using outlandish impersonations to make us see just how far we were willing to go, and when we had had enough, we'd realize that we'd gone farther than we ever could have imagined.

He made us laugh at everyone, at everything. So maybe he could have made us laugh at this.

My initial plan for this post was to imitate Robin's style. Maybe I still will at some point, but for now I can't. Which is too bad, because I could really, really use the laugh.

Few comics were more scathing about how we looked at the world. The utter insanity of how our society operated was all he needed, Mork staring forever at what amounted to Human Civilization and in the end being about to do nothing about it besides laugh.

I could use that laugh. Not for Robin. I will mourn him but remember fondly how he made us laugh, and hope he has found some peace after nearly half a century of wrestling with bi-polar disorder and addiction. No, I need that laugh for Michael.

Remember Michael Brown? Unarmed, seventeen years old, and gunned down by police guns after stealing some cigarettes and candy.

He might have vanished as soon as he appeared, another tragic story quickly supplanted by a "personal interest" story, a race-car driver killed in a race. Kevin Ward Jr.'s death was sad, yes, though not the sort of thing one expects splashed on the news everywhere. It was a highly publicized traffic accident, not an unarmed boy being gunned down by police officers.

But Michael's story wouldn't go away. The people of his neighborhood rioted, refusing to vanish, refusing to allow the "official" story to be told and then swept away. The best option for them? Probably not, but the "No Justice, No Peace" message struck home for me, and hard. There is something to be said for showing the illusion of peace for the farce it apparently is.

Michael was returned to the spotlight as people refused to let his story die, until teargas forced them to disperse. Real conversation could maybe happen. And then, Robin died. And again, Michael has gone away. I don't know if his story will come back this time, or if it does, if it will be the truth. It doesn't take much for the media to scare the country with images of young black men.

I need Robin Williams. He'd have just the words to give us all a cathartic laugh to relieve the impossible tension while highlighting how horrible all of this.

Like how, even in the worst case scenario, Michael had pushed an officer of the law. Robin would likely have joked about Cops who couldn't come out on top over a schoolyard bully.

Like how Michael stealing cigarettes and pushing an officer (assuming, again, the worst case scenario) obviously requires deadly force, but Cliven Bundy and a few hundred of his best armed friends having an armed confrontation with federal officers doesn't even warrant jail time.

Like how when the people of our country are driven to the point of rioting out of their frustration with the state of justice in this nation, our media instead covers the death of a rich old white guy from Marin County, California. (No one was more scathing of the Rich White Guy from Marin than Robin. It would have been brilliant.)

He would have, but I can't. I can't find the funny anymore.

Someday, this will probably all go away. I hope the family gets their day in court, to confront the officer who thought gunfire was a suitable response to a push, if the story holds up. Maybe it DID make sense. But more likely it will just vanish under a tsunami of celebrity "news" and other such drivel, or a political story of the "heroism" of men who, had they been disarming white people, would have been called fascists. That's how our nation works, now. Get away from the downers, get to the funny story.

But for a long, long time, our funny stories were provided by Robin Williams. And everytime I watch a clip of his, I'll laugh, but remember the last joke, the one I needed that he couldn't make.

When I remember Robin Williams, I hope I will also remember Michael Brown, and the joke that their deaths made on the state of "justice" in the USA.