HUGO CHAVEZ (in 2005): “The World has enough for everybody, but some minorities, the descendants of the same people that crucified Christ, and of those that expelled Bolívar from here and in their own way crucified him, have taken ownership of the riches of the world, a minority has taken ownership of the gold of the world, the silver, the minerals, water, the good lands, petrol, well, the riches, and they have concentrated the riches in a small number of hands.”
Gatemouth had an aversion to pumping his own gas ever since he splashed himself right before a Maryland funeral and had to give a eulogy in his blue jeans,
The Citgo Station he gazed upon was full-service.
But Dybbuk, then about five, had other ideas.
Dybbuk‘s Aunt Feygele may have been a leftist, but having arrived here illegally from Poland in 1979 and eventually applying for political asylum, she had little use for left despots who embraced every kind of socialism, including that of fools. Feyge had told Dybbuk that Citgo was owned by Hugo, and that Hugo did not like Jews.
“I’m a Jew, so Hugo doesn’t like me,” said the little boy emphatically.
“Fine,” said Gatey, “but you’re pumping the gas then.” The prospect delighted Dybbuk no end.
Feygele, her mom and her sisters, who Gatey referred to collectively as The Rootless Cosmopolitans, were very much into boycotts. California Table Grapes and lettuce (they preferred arugala anyway), Wallmart (as if they‘d ever go there), Pepsi Cola, and Domino’s Pizza. Most of the boycotts had ended long ago, but one could never be sure.
Gatey was nonplussed. He boycotted Domino’s because he lived a block from Sam’s; a red checkered table clothed Italian place with old fashioned toilets with pistols taped behind the tanks. Later, when his cholestoral started running high, he boycotted Sam’s as well.
Every Saturday, during their whirlwind courtship, Gatey and Domestic Partner would go to a hole in the wall on Atlantic Avenue and eat a breakfast of fresh-baked Yemenite bread and exquisite Red Beans spiced with Garlic and a blend of spices which surely fueled Columbus’ voyages. Every weekend, the owner treated them like royalty, while filling their stomachs for ridiculously low prices.
Then one Saturday, before they went off to their Chaverah to study the week’s Torah portion, the restaurant owner treated them and the other customers to a free propaganda film about the Intafada and DP decreed that Gatey was never to dine there again.
This produced long hours of debate.
“They hate the Jews.”
“But you go to that Palestinian place; they surely hate the Jews more.”
“They surely do,” said DP, “but they have the courtesy not to let me know it.”
Feygele was even more adamant. She was boycotting Theresa’s Polish restaurant because she’d heard a waitress make an anti-Semitic remark.
“What did she say?”
“I heard her, in Polish, say, with the Jews, you get no tips.”
“Well, how do you know she wasn’t talking about her love life?”
Once again, it was agreed that the entire country from Kielce to Cracow was made up of anti-Semites with faces like pigs. Gatey thought of saying something, but he‘d never been forced to live in an attic, or to live with someone who had. He had never lived as the last vestige of a lost generation, amongst those who were mostly glad that generation was gone, amongst folks who been unable or unwilling to preserve their Jews, but made up for it by preserving instead their contempt for those who no longer lived amongst them.
As the debate wound down, it was once again agreed to look the other way at bigots as long as they had the courtesy to not remind you of their bigotry. Life could be lived without red beans, but it was inhumane to expect them to forgo kielbasa.
Gatey snuck out in the middle of the conversation, went up to Cobble Hill and got himself some Yemenite beans and some indescribably delicious soup.
Back when he was heeding Dybbuk’s advice, some of Gatey’s lefty friends reminded him that every Citgo station was individually owned by folks who’d never closed down a newspaper they didn’t like. Strangely, most of them, and many others from different streams of thought, seem to have no concern that the same applies to about 90% of BP outlets as well.
The boycott is clearly unjust to almost all of those who are the real targets of it. Nonetheless, it is not hard to acknowledge that the impact of the boycotts has a prophylactic and deterrent effect, even if the targets are the wrong ones.
Of course, the same could said about an execution. Whether the perp is actually guilty is almost irrelevant to the salutary effect upon the crime rate.