Pirates are back!

I am so glad pirates are back in my life, in our lives. Our world is boring at sea and it shouldn’t be. The days of Nelson and Halsey are long gone. There hasn't been an interesting naval battle since the Falklands and that was in 1981.

There’s been twenty-eight years without high-sea hijinx.

Well, there were all sorts of submarine hijinx, but no one saw that because it was underwater. It was, therefore, not high-sea hijinx. It was underwater hijinx.

Then, the Somali Pirates come along. Thank god. Taking people hostage and holding them for ransom is classic pirate stuff. I'm proud of them. “Pirate” means something again.

Kids who download music, not pirates. Kids who download movies, not pirates. Men who act like Keith Richards in Hollywood blockbusters, not pirates. People who take control of a ship and hold someone hostage, they are pirates! Driving a Red Monte Carlo and playing ridiculous amounts of World of Warcraft, surprisingly, makes you a pirate.

Finally, we have the stereotypical villain we’ve been missing since the Soviet Union fell.

We need more pirates in our lives, more bandits, more rustlers, more Mongols, more commies. We do not need more thugs. Some might think that is a racist statement, but it's not. There have simply not been thousands of movies, comics, books, magazines and comic strips, not to mention hundreds of years, vilifying thugs. Thugs just have thousands of crappy hip-hop songs glorifying them.

I don't like hip-hop. There, I said it.

Back to my point: I am really glad to have bad guys in my life again.

Bernie Madolf is not a bad guy. He was just a greedy Jew. That is not a good villain. Shakespeare is the only guy who has turned a greedy Jew into a good villain. Well, Hitler convinced the Germans that the Jews were villains, but he really, REALLY, doesn't count.

Karl Rove is a good bad guy. He actually talks about how he loves Machiavelli, with no sense of irony. That is a great super villain. When you look at his track record, you can see what a good villain he was/is, a super villain in fact.

Super villains are really common right now. Look around. There are plenty of super villains. AT&T, The U.S. government, Google, the Republican party, Starbucks, Comcast, the Republican party, insurance companies, the Democratic party, the Health care system, the Democratic party and the Republican party. There are lots of super villains worthy of a Bond movie, but no common villains.

That is why I'm so glad these pirates are around. I'm hoping there will be more pirate activity in the third world. There should be more bad guys who don't need entire governments (James bond was/is a state sponsored hero) to bring them down. We need a renaissance of small time crooks, professional criminals who don't sell drugs. We need this type of localized villainy for narrative purposes. The newspapers need this type of villainy to transpire. America needs more of this villainy

Let's hope these Somali pirates will inspire the poor and huddled masses of Africa, Asia and Central and South America to take up arms and hold some poor hostage for ransom, leading to the true American dream: The opportunity for hyper-aggressive white Americans to shoot people of color.

Chant with me...U-S-A...U-S-A...U-S-A...U-S-A.

God bless those Somali Pirates.

K Tuttle