300 Lbs. and Rising: Stars and stripes: an exposé

There’s a chapter in my favorite novel, “The Ginger Man” by J.P. Donleavy, where the noble and inebriated protagonist, Sebastian Dangerfield, is traveling home in a tram with a package of liver. Upon discovering himself in a state of indecent exposure, he makes a hasty retreat and jumps off, leaving the package behind. A man calls out after him, “You can’t remember your meat at all today!”

The moral lesson in Donleavy’s amoral tale is this: One must be dressed in public so as not to present a state of undress. In computer terms, one must WinZip the 8.0.

And, of course, most of us do. When the essentially Lockian Blake talked about “mind-forg’d manacles,” he wasn’t kidding. The mind-forg’d manacles that perpetuate Blake’s dystopian cycle of misery also keep us from killing each other, paying our gas bills and, in most cases, keeping our pants on.

This is why taking the pants off by way of social commentary makes an incredible impact. As a democratic soldier might say, even Private Johnson can cause General Dementia.

I’m not talking about nudists here. I prefer not to hug trees, but women. In the absence of women, I prefer to hug my body pillow in shame and misery. But I digress.

Recently, there was a Sept. 11-themed comedy contest in Cambridge, where the contestants were required to say something offensive, 100 words about Islam, and in closing pay a tribute to America. Sam Walters, a well-known local comedian, was participating in the contest.

Walters’ tribute to our wonderful nation involved coloring his penis red, white and blue and decorating it with stars and stripes. While the audience appreciated his valiant gesture, he lost the contest. “I don’t think my penis has ever been more embarrassed,” he told Reuters on Sept. 12, “or looked so small. You would have thought the vertical stripes would have made it seem longer.”

I know that most of you will dismiss the issue by calling him a prime example of infidel swine and perhaps declare a Jihad on him. “He deserves to be stoned,” you’ll say, “but a man that crazy must have been stoned anyway.” I know that I myself saw this as an opportunity to talk about genitalia.

On further reflection, however, I realized that you had to admire his cujones — as I’m sure members of the audience did when they were painted red, white and blue. It was a display of a man’s congenital patriotism when he would choose to show his love, among other things, at the expense of personal dignity and I, for one, look up to him for it.

While Walters is often found frantically going willy-nilly for fits and giggles, he’s sensitive to the deeper concerns at hand. In an interview from 2001 at WillMcNeill.com, he says of Sept. 11 and its after-effects that “it’s hard to call for peace when you’ve become walleyed from trying to check your flank... The situation’s also forcing me to do at least a bare minimum of real research because I feel a responsibility to actually have some idea what the ... I’m talking about. I can’t be as cavalierly cruel as I used to since people are truly hurting. I used to just throw out grenades... now I snipe.”

I tried to get in touch with Walters to get a quote or two, but when I stalked him at work, all I got was “call me Saturday.” I called him at the wrong time though, maybe because I’m a jerk, and only got through to his voice mail. That stinks — like the original version of Donkey Kong — because I had wanted to enliven my otherwise flaccid prose with a witticism or five and a half. The one other thing he mentioned was that “it was a retarded idea.” That’s a matter of opinion, but he sure got his exposure ... in more ways than one!

Bad puns aside though, we should learn from Walters’ example, even if it’s a wee bit difficult to take lessons from a man who paints his penis for fun and profit. You might protest till you’re purple in the head, but Walters shows that evil things happen, since this is an essentially evil world, but to move on and be able to laugh at tragedy is the surest sign of human strength. Walters’ act stands like a pillar of support for generations and regenerations to come.

Arafat Kazi, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press.