I ENJOY joking about Trump’s pets-for-dinner paranoia as much as the next person. Provided, that is, that we’re laughing at Trump and his stupidity—and not at immigrants.

Food taboos are, unfortunately, fodder for dividing Us from Them. Mormons are wary of coffee- and alcohol-drinkers, Jews and Muslims of pig-eaters, Hindus of cow eaters, Americans of frog- and dog-eaters, and on and on. From there it is but a few steps to dehumanization, that is, viewing swaths of people as lesser, as deserving of condescension, exclusion, inequity, even aggression. (“Let’s bomb the hell outta those disgusting [whatever]-eaters.”)

Though Trump’s rumeur du jour accuses people from Haiti, “they’ll eat your pets” has long played into Asian hate. I have often been warned by concerned, misinformed friends not to let an Asian family adopt a puppy or kitten lest the animal  become their next meal. 

Come on! No, your Asian neighbors are NOT butchering and eating your pets.

To be sure, there are countries—not just in Asia—where a minority of people consume canine meat. Even so, the consumers do NOT chase down and butcher roving dogs. They purchase canine meat the same way you and I purchase beef, pork, or chicken: at a market.* 

They don’t chase down and butcher pets here, either. **

I might add that many Asian families, here and abroad, keep dogs and cats as companions, just as you and I do.

As for “they’ll eat your pets” jokes, do not brook the “it’s all in good fun” defense. The most benignly-intended wisecracks about pet-eating inevitably circulate. And escalate. And reinforce harmful stereotypes. And, in turn, generate yet more rumors. The resulting snowball is Asian Hate, and the result of that is vandalized Asian-owned businesses and personal assaults on people of Asian descent for the mere act of walking down the street. Such inhuman events are not rare. They show up frequently in news reports. Many more go unreported.

Let’s have no part in it. Do not entertain and certainly do not repeat racist or ethnic jokes of any sort. As a humor writer (alleged, anyway), I assure you that no shortage of human foibles are ripe for a good lampooning with no risk of dehumanization.
__________________________

* Those who supply the markets may or may not obtain animals legitimately. No need to @ me about that. 

** Please don’t @ me if your brother-in-law’s cousin’s best friend’s old army buddy swears that he heard about an immigrant family that ate someone’s pet hamster. It’s probably not true, but I allow for the rarest rule-proving exception.

​Multnomah County, home to Portland, Oregon, plans to replace its Burnside Bridge, one of a handful spanning the Willamette River. Good. The busy, important bridge is 98 years old and not even close to earthquake proof.

The county came up with six proposed designs and surveyed residents to see which they preferred. Why the county bothered is beyond me, for in the end it overruled respondents, choosing the design rated fourth out of six.

Worse, the design’s price tag is $45 million higher than the nearest alternate design. 

The county’s rational? That the bridge would look really, really cool, setting Portland apart.

I’m not kidding. One bridge committee member put it this way: “A $900 million bridge ought to look like no other in entire bridge-building history.”

Portland has some serious problems. Murders, car thefts, an understaffed police force, organized theft, drug abuse, and homelessness, to name a few. I would happily trade a really, really cool looking bridge for an unremarkable one if it meant putting $45 million to work on any of the above.

As an editorial in today’s edition of The Oregonian put it, “Portland does not need to compete on a global level for bridge bragging rights.” 

Amen.

EARLIER THIS week, at the urging of my 70-year-old bones, I bought a new mattress. Even better, I bought an adjustable frame. No more stacking pillows behind me to read or watch TV!

In the first store I visited, the salesperson didn’t impress. I recognized some ineptly applied, medium-pressure tactics, and there were outright false claims about the healing power of sonic waves built into higher-cost frames. (In fairness, odds are she was only reciting what they’d fed her, that she believed, in training.)

There was one high point. She said, “Let me show you the mattress my parents are on.” I said, “Are you sure we should disturb them?” It took a moment, but she actually laughed. It may have been a new experience for her.

“This is my first stop.” I told her, “I’m going to do some comparison shopping. I may be back.” Which was true. I hadn’t ruled her out. At that point she all but fell to the floor and wrapped her arms around my ankles. I didn’t much care for that, and neither did my ankles. (Again, in fairness, I’m well aware that, in retail, letting a prospect leave usually means never seeing that prospect again.)

The next store struck a refreshing contrast. The salesperson was pleasant, not pushy, and rolled well with what I flatter myself by calling my humor. They had the products I wanted, and the pricing stretched but fell within my budget. So I bought.

I was prepared to wait a week or more for delivery, but my bed arrived the next day. Even more surprising, the delivery dudes were eminently pleasant and helpful—even though it was 7:30 p.m., 98 degrees Fahrenheit outside, they had one more delivery to go, and they’d been working since 7 that morning.

Whoever heard of having a great experience buying and taking delivery of a bed?

Enough time with no repercussions has passed that I feel I can safely share this. It happened a few weeks ago.

I had pulled up to a T intersection, waiting for traffic to clear so I could make a left. Traffic was unusually heavy, so I was there for a while. In time, along came a pedestrian. The car behind me meant I couldn’t back up, and the moving wall of vehicles in front of me meant I couldn’t pull forward. Sorry dude, I thought, but you’ll have to walk around me.

Nope. He headed straight for me. I thought, Panhandler? Yikes, I thought as he drew closer, is he going to rob me? Are my doors locked? Oh, good. They are.

Clunk! He’d walked straight into my car door. A bewildered look crossed his face. Seeming to collect himself, he tried to walk forward again. Clunk! Once again into my door, once again with the bewildered look. I wondered, Insurance scam? Will he claim I hit him?

Nope again. Re-collecting himself, this time he successfully walked around the back of my car, found the sidewalk on the other side, and kept going.

He appeared unhurt. I suspect he was very, very high on something.

Later, when I checked, I saw that my car door bore no evidence of the encounter.

RIDING HOME on the bus some years ago, I overheard a fellow several rows behind me regaling passengers with joke after joke to the effect that female students attending a local university were overweight, unsightly, or both.

I’d already heard a good many of the jokes. I had, until then, even repeated some.

Cranking my head around for a look at the source of the hilarity, I beheld about as overweight and unsightly a specimen as ever took a breath. Said specimen was in no position to joke about others’ looks.

And, I realized, neither was I. With that, I was done with jokes of that sort.

It took a little longer for me to figure out that “not being in a position to joke about it” isn’t really the problem.

The problem is that the only difference between a group guffawing at “humor” of this ilk and a circle of playground bullies taunting an unlucky kid is that the unlucky kid isn’t physically present. It is nonetheless just as wrong-headed and, in the long run, just as harmful.

No matter that the kid isn’t physically present. The taunting will find its way there in one form or another. Humor with a point to make or a target to hit spreads, bolstering the like-minded and helping to make converts of others. If the point is humane, all the better. But an inhumane point spreads and swells just as fast. All it needs to erupt and cause real harm, from discrimination to physical violence to inequitable laws, is for one bully to gain prominence and endorse such talk as “telling it like it is” or “saying what must be said.” And for comedians to offer flimsy excuses like “it’s just jokes,” “lighten up,” and the scoundrel’s perpetual whine, “it’s my free speech.”

That bus ride was the beginning of my realizing that humor targeting appearance, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disabilities, etc., isn’t funny. It hurts people.

I enjoy writing humor. One magazine even went so far as to make me its humor columnist. But the above-described epiphany meant giving up what I had thought were some great lines. I don’t miss them.

• • •

This is a tricky one.

I just saw a comment about an alleged frequent, unfortunate transliteration from American English into Chinese. A respondent with a PhD in Chinese said it ain’t so and provided a thorough explanation showing where and how the confusion arises.

The OP writer’s answer? “Sorry if I’m wrong. But I don’t think so—my Chinese aunt taught me that.”

Now, native speakers’ takes are not to be lightly dismissed. But, then, they can be wrong. If you don’t believe me, consider the number of native American English speakers who mess up words and phrases like “hardly,” “comprise,” “complimentary” and “complementary,” “used to” or “supposed to,” and when to use “I” versus “me.” A foreign national with a PhD in English would likely know better.

But then, PhDs can be and often are wrong.

So, do we side with the fellow with a PhD in Chinese or the fellow whose aunt told him otherwise?

In this case, my money is on the dude with the PhD in Chinese. But I could be wrong.

I have come to know a number refugees from a nation under the severe rule of a larger, more powerful neighbor. (To protect the safety of the families the refugees left behind, I will not name either country.) Every one of them—most as children—escaped by walking over staggeringly tall, snow-capped mountains. Finding temporary refuge, they worked, scrimped, struggled with a new language, and eventually crossed the ocean to the U.S.

A cardinal rule while crossing the mountains, they tell me, is to keep moving. The area is heavily patrolled. Should a member of your group break a limb, fall into a river, or what-have-you, you move on. To stop to help is to expose all to risk of capture.

They describe terrible conditions in their homeland. One man, now in his early 40s, was severely beaten by police for hoisting his country’s flag over his school. He was 14 and departed soon after. For their own safety, his parents explained his disappearance by telling authorities he had died. Others tell me of jail time, fines, and beatings for displaying the “wrong” religious symbols in their homes. When my refugee friends video conference with family in their homeland, knowing the calls are monitored, they take care not to identify themselves by name and not to display flags or religious symbols lest they expose their families to risk of beatings, fines, and jail.

Their gratitude and relief for being in the U.S. is immeasurable. One 30-ish man--who trekked across the mountains at age seven!—told me, “I understand your criticism of U.S. politics. But I have to tell you, this is like heaven to us.”

I saw his point and let it rest. This was a time for listening and empathizing, not for pointing out that “things could be worse” is no argument for complacency, for the need for vigilance lest the worse that things could be become reality.

I’m pointing it out here, to the rest of us, instead.

To create art is to risk.

In writing, passive voice is to be avoided.

Resolved: Henceforth, any mystery writer who puts “There’s still one thing I don’t understand“ in the mouth of a character at the wrap-up of the denouement shall be subject to a sound slap, a wagging finger in the face, and a thorough scolding.

There should be mandatory jail time for writers who pen “with every fiber of [possessive pronoun] being.”

Authors who write “it is what it is” should sit in a corner and not be permitted to speak or write for 90 days while they ponder the seriousness of their crime.

If I berate you for not knowing that vault has two different meanings, is it an ad homonym attack? If I berate you for using there for their, is it an ad homophone attack?

Novelists who switch between first and third person voice from one chapter to the next should not be permitted to live.

Sometimes alliteration marks good writing. More often, it’s a simple show of sophomoric syntactical silliness.

More people should write, but fewer people should publish.

Robert Louis Stevenson has a nightmare about Jeckyll and Hyde and writes a bestseller. I had a nightmare about weak coffee. What I am supposed to do with that?

I like picking up a new word here or there, so I don’t mind an author who on occasion sends me to the dictionary. But the fellow who penned “absquatulated” where “fled” would have sufficed deserves a slap.

I’m unimpressed when people say, “I just finished my first novel.” Unless they mean writing, not reading.

Proposed: That the next screenwriter who places “This isn’t over yet” in the hero’s mouth be subject to administrative leave without pay and not less than 120 hours of community service. No real hero would say that. Besides, unless the end credits are rolling, it’s implicit.
 
Thanks to movies, I'm not afraid of being held against my will. I know that in every secure facility is a ventilator shaft big enough for an adult to crawl through.

I look forward to the day I see a novel advertised, “Now a minor motion picture.”