markus prime lives
The racial insensitivities that apparently were the nexus of the Dallas swimming pool fracas leaves one swimming (or not) back in time. The Brown Shirts, after having defeated the Communists and Trade Unionists on the streets of Berlin, finally overcame the weary old Kaiser and manipulated their candidate to a ;position of one-man rule. As the Nazis were preparing to convert the rest of the world into a glorious Fourth Reich, there was a swimming pool in Philadelphia, between The Village and Lehigh Avenue. It was just a few blocks from Shibe Park, where the Phillies and the A's played baseball. During the steamy summer months, we kids would walk past that swimming pool. Instinctively, we knew you needed skin with a low melanin content to be admitted there. That instinct was bred over several centuries of incisive inculcation. It is weirdly nostalgic to see that process still so blatantly displayed by an armed police officer with his knee in the back of a slight, bikini-clad, young lady, barely out of puberty.
Bettmann/Corbis
Not too long ago, in the suburbs of that same Philadelphia – called The Cradle of Liberty and The City of Brotherly Love – there was a similar occurrence to what transpired in Dallas. A private club there, apparently wanting to share its ample swimming facilities with those less fortunate, extended an invitation to a youth club back in the city. When the bus with the kids arrived, the suburbanites were appalled with the mixture of white, brown and black epidermis. They immediately declared the premises overcrowded, while currently excising that bothersome brotherly slogan from the plaque on their wall!
Horace/Cort AP
***** ***** *****
When Franklin said,
"A 'republic,' ma'am,
"If you can keep it,"
He truly bred
The most shameful scam –
As high as you can heap it!
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