[Note: Hamm is on vacation. Actually, he is in the loony bin. Therefore, Thaddeus Birch, a distant cousin of Mr. Madrigal, has provided a copy of the document that granted Hamm this nice long vacation.
[You see, Hamm's memory of English returned during a stay in Alabama. If nothing else, he has learned one thing. Never complain about racism to the governor of Alabama. (Unless it's reverse-racism, that is.)]
Dear Gov. James:
Shocked! I couldn't believe it!
I am a visitor to this great state. I am participating in a summer research program sponsored by the fine (no sarcasm here) chemistry department at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
People warned me, though. Consider: I'm from Tennessee. They said to expect things to be different. They said that since Birmingham is in the Deep South, that "funny things" might happen during my stay.
The friend, in particular, who told me this might consider a joke from a particularly rousing episode of "Seinfeld" to be a "funny thing."
In the end, I decided that a two hundred mile trip couldn't make that much of a difference.
Until now.
Everything negative anyone has said about Alabama manifested itself on page 5 of the 21 July Kaleidoscope, a newspaper published at the university I'm working at:
No, I'm not referring to the grammatical errors. Unless "white" (spoken with a really redneck accent?) has come to mean something beyond what I was taught, I believe this is a perfectly preserved specimen of racism.
I suspect that I'll be the only one who even blinks.
It obviously made it though the Classifieds proofreaders. Surely there must be some policy concerning offensive (or perhaps illegal?) ads.
I doubt (though this is not meant to offend homosexuals) that this ad would have been printed:
So surely there are standards. And I'm sure that they're moral standards, in fitting with a newspaper who features a columnist who seems to only want to quote portions of the Bible and various gospel lyrics.
(Like the monkeys who could, if given a typewriter, an infinite supply of ink, and immortality, write the complete works of Shakespeare, I expect this diligent gentleman to produce every mass intoned by the Catholic Church...if only he spoke in Latin.)
Do the rules simply overlook racist behavior, or is this sort of thing so prevalent that this foul was not flagrant enough to notice?
Of course, equally bad would have been:
Would these have been caught by the apparently sleeping Classifieds copywriters?
I just can not understand why people would want to live their lives in self-imposed segregation.
Why choose to limit one's options?
Or worse, why choose to limit other people's options?
I'll keep this ad forever. It's pasted to a scrap book entitled, "Memories of Alabama." My friend, doubtless, will call it, "I Told You So."
Sincerely,
Hamm Madrigal