C h a z a q
It means "Strength"

Cho on Thanksgiving
2003-11-27 | 5:01 p.m.

I just read Margaret Cho's opinion of today and wanted to share it. Go back one entry for mine (oh yeah, she does like to cuss, so if that makes you squeamish, don't read on):

11/27/2003

No Thank You

No thank you.

I do not wish to celebrate some holiday where the pilgrims and the Indians decided to have a potluck and the Indians bring some maize and the pilgrims bring whatever kind of bullshit those square hat, buckle shoe puritan motherfuckers eat, and then sat down together and gave thanks - for what? If I was the Indians, I would have RSVP'd a nice big old smoke signal "UNABLE TO ATTEND DUE TO YOUR IGNANCE. P.S. FUCK YOU MILES STANDISH!!!" I do not call this a holiday. It's like saying we need to celebrate Kristallnacht (if you don't know what that is, you just ignant and need to spend a day at the Museum of Tolerance - because you are intolerable) by breaking a bunch of glass and eating bratwurst. I don't think so. We celebrate this holiday, to commemorate the fact that we destroyed and demolished almost an entire race of people. We came here, acted like "Oh - I got to leave England 'cause this religious persecution of me has got to go!" and acted like the land is ours. That was ignant.

We celebrate Thanksgiving to give thanks for giving all the native people crazy diseases that they never had because we never gave a thought there would be other people in the world besides us. We sit down and bow our heads in prayer because we took all of the different tribes and mixed them all up - thinking that since they looked somewhat similar that they all must get along and be the same even though they all had different Gods, religions, customs, histories, legends, genealogies, truths, wars going on between them - as if they were just one feather leather gang of primitives that needed taming. They were many nations. A true United States, but because if they didn't wear those pointy ass buckle shoes and read out of the Bible, we just assumed they must be animals.

We all sit around and carve a turkey to get all nostalgic about how we made them walk hundreds of miles without food or water, as they cried and died, being forced to leave the valleys and mountains they loved and worshipped. By casting them out of their land, we were making them leave their heaven behind. That road is called the Trail of Tears and drivers today travel along it and the ghosts of all those dead innocents knock their cars off the road, make them see scary ass shit, make them get into accidents and die. All I can say is, you better take the 101 instead.

The turkey is stuffed with raped women, dead babies, warriors who were stripped of their ability to fight and could no longer protect their families - which to warriors - is a fate worse than death. Cranberry sauce is blood of Geronimo, Sitting Bull, the Comanches, the Braves- the warriors that despite all the odds, still had the spirit to fight for their land that was not only their home, but their God, that was spilt during Custer's Last Stand. They did manage to kick some colonial ass though and I am glad to that. They bled for their families, so much that it soaked the ground, shed for no other reason than we just took it upon ourselves to evict the original OG old school United States and create our own U - whited States. (Fuck you I could make a pun if I want.)

There is pumpkin pie that we use to stuff down all the other starchy, tryptophan laden Boston Market bullshit, and reminisce about how we put the few remaining survivors in reservations, named not because you have to make reservations to get in because it is so nice and popular, but because we all have reservations about having to go there!!!! Many live there to this day, in poverty, with poor health care, rudimentary and insufficient education, suffering from depression, drug addiction, alcoholism - and yet we still INSIST it isn't a concentration camp because it got a casino! This just proves us again to be incredibly ignant with no ability to concentrate.

We finish dinner and watch sports, and make a mockery of the names of the powerful warriors who fought so heroically, yet unsuccessfully - because they were unfairly outnumbered, trying to protect their people from utter and complete genocide. We eat so much that we get tired, and just plain forget that we wiped all the history books in schools clean of all our wrongdoing, our evils, our rape, our robbery, because we got to represent for the founding fathers, and we got to look presentable to the children. We have almost all but lost the beautiful religions, language, rituals, legends, the art of friendship and communication with the animals, the way to live peacefully with respect for the motherland. But it has been kept alive by the very few who remember, who pass it down to their descendants, the next generation. Those mothers telling their children, passing down the beauty of their beliefs, the power of their rituals, practicing the medicine and magic that still exists in the all of everywhere, no matter what has been done to try to extinguish it, remains real and as powerful as ever. They are keeping their knowledge of the land and their nations alive through the memory, through the voices, through the spirit that watches over us all, and they still are truly the owners of this country. They have won. They are still chiefs and warriors, braves and squaws. They have not been erased. They will never be.

I fast today (which you know I would not normally do because girl - I love to eat). It is a sick joke to call this 'holiday' Thanksgiving. It should be called Thanks - taking. Taking a land that was not ours, taking the lives of millions. I am thankful every other day of the year for my life, my family, all that I have. But today I say - "NO THANK YOU MOTHERFUCKER! I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON A PIECE OF TURKEY CARTILAGE!"

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