The Ubiquitous Bird

There's a gesture that is generally regarded as rude; and that in itself might contribute to its widespread use. We do live in crude times; but the days of yesteryear had their crude moments as well.

I'm talking about the bird; whether used as in shooting the bird, or flipping the bird. Anyway, no avians are hurt by that gesture, so nature lovers can rest easy! This gesture is widespread in Western cultures; and recorded examples of it go as far back as in the plays of Aristophanes where a minor character righteously flips off Socrates. (Now Aristophanes was a frequently raunchy playwright; he wrote Lysistrata.) 

The English and the French find solace in saluting others with the bird; so do the ill-bred of the Fourth Ward in New Orleans.* And, no, mes amis: its origins had nothing to do with English longbowmen proving their middle fingers were not removed! That's a myth.

Our current unfriendlies, the North Koreans (supposedly AKA to themselves as Best Koreans) apparently were unfamiliar with the gesture when it was made by captured U.S. sailors from USS Pueblo years and years ago. In fact, they mistook if for the Hawaiian shaka sign!

But let's consider the high water mark for flipping the bird: When the Las Vegas shooter killed more than 50 innocent people attending a concert, one intrepid person in the crowd flipped him the bird. Apparently the photograph appearing in the New York Post was real. (Thanks to New Orleans's best T.V. station for that information.)

For some reason, his defiant act spoke for all of us when crap like the shooter pulled comes down: "Hey, we're Americans! Up yours, Asshole!"

The passage from the Henley's verse, "bloody but unbowed" comes to mind.

*Guess from which ward I came from!

Apparently not having a beautiful
day in the neighborhood.