Incendiary Advice

You mean to tell me you'd try to kill the John Doe movement if you can't use it to get what you want?...Well, that certainly is a new low. I guess I've seen everything now...You...think of deliberately killing an idea that's made millions of people a little bit happier. An idea that's brought thousands of 'em here from all over the country - by bus, and by freight and jalopies and on foot - so they could pass on to each other their own simple little experiences...

Why, your type's as old as history - if you can't lay your dirty fingers on a decent idea and twist it and squeeze it and stuff it into your own pockets, you slap it down.

Like dogs, if you can't eat something, you bury it!

Why, this is the one worthwhile thing that's come along. People are finally finding out that the guy next door isn't a bad egg. That's simple, isn't it?...It may be the one thing capable of saving this cock-eyed world.

Yet you sit back there on your fat hulks and tell me you'll kill it if you can't use it. Well, you go ahead and try. You couldn't do it in a million years with all your radio stations and all your power, because it's bigger than whether I'm a fake, it's bigger than your ambitions, and it's bigger than all the bracelets and fur coats in the world.

What makes them come and listen and get up their John Doe clubs the way they do?....Maybe they're like me - just beginning to get an idea of what those things mean.

--Long John Willoughby, Meet John Doe

These words are particularly suitable to the whole andykaufmanreturns blogspot. Sure, not everyone went there for the same reasons. Some, like me, had a great time buying into the fantasy. It made me re-read my Kaufman books and think about the past 20 years of living. What are identities? Are we doomed to fit one mold or can we be many? Is genius really that far from insanity?

Mostly, though, the blogs' comments from people far and wide made me realize that the war and our current POTUS are not aberrations. Humanity hasn't really evolved much, after all.

We're still more than willing to strike first in anger, line-jumping to slam our neighbor just to feel a little more secure in some self-proclaimed intelligence. We're still mostly judgmental, overly arrogant and convinced beyond a doubt of our so-called rightful places in the world. By and large, we've still got little collective capacity for flights of imagination, childlike wonder and general openness to seeing what could be, rather than what is.

In that kind of environment, if Andy Kaufman really were alive, who would blame him for wanting to stay dead?

Ed. note: Perhaps I'm just projecting. Maybe it's just me who wishes to stay dead?