Recently I've been pining for the vintage vehicle of my college youth...a 3-speed bike. I see no need for 24 speeds, and every bike I ever bought my kids constantly had problems with the derailleur. So I've been browsing online to check out 3-speed commuter bikes (not easy to find!). My search took me to the site of the Oak Cliff Bicycle Company where I was horrified to find the following flyer for a local bicycle race next weekend.
This flyer is so repulsive to me on so many levels, I don't know where to start. First, I left a comment on the bike shop's site, telling them how offensive I found the poster...and the very concept of the race. I added that I assume that the folks behind the race and poster did not live through that terrible time. The site owner responded: "No they did not. We’re sorry, we honestly do not want to offend anyone but I’m also not going to censor their Flyer."
In my mind, this poster is a symbol of so much that is wrong with our society. It is a reflection of how so many people, especially those of Gens X and Y, have become numb to images of graphic violence. From video games to movies, these young people have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of scenes of exploding brains, steaming entrails, and other gratuitous gore. It also expresses that desire to shock people's sensibilities, just for the sake of being shocking.
In this age of the 24 hour news cycle, when cable news devotes a whole afternoon to live coverage of the Balloon Boy hoax, these folks can't imagine the depth of a nation's despair during the week of November 22, 1963. I remember that, after the assassination and into my high school years, when that ominous voice broke into a TV program and intoned, "We interrupt this program to bring you a special announcement," my heart leapt into my throat, and I braced myself for some bit of devastating news. I was in sixth grade in 1963, and to me the assassination marked the end of innocence, the end of childhood as I knew it. I watched as the caisson moved down Pennsylvania Avenue, and the drumbeat and the clopping of the horses' hooves was the soundtrack of grief. After seeing the widow in the blood-stained pink dress, or watching a little boy on his third birthday saluting his father's coffin, it is impossible to understand how anyone could make that poster for the JFK Assassination Bike Race.
Maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the people behind this race and poster aren't cruel or sadistic. Maybe they are just ignorant. Maybe all they know about the JFK assassination is what they learned in high school history class, which probably amounted to answering a couple of multiple choice questions about the presidency of Pres. Kennedy. Perhaps this video will give them an inkling, just an inkling, of the scope of the nation's grief.
UPDATE:
The race went on as scheduled, even though the organizers did not have a permit. When interviewed by Channel 11 news, Race organizer, Alain Warchilde, stated: "It's not my art work. It's a cover from the 1978 single for the Misfits; something I felt tied in with to the theme of the race. That's the reason it was used, not to offend anybody… not to upset anyone."
What an absolutely specious argument! The Misfit single Warchilde is referring to is an obscene, even more offensive, song about the assassination. If it tied in with the theme of the race, then the whole thing was obviously intended to offend and upset people!
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