America's Wile E. Coyote Moment  Wednesday, 13 April 2011 10:21
By Davidson Loehr, Truthout | Op-Ed   • Print   • Email Americas
Wile E Coyote Moment  Budget repair bill protesters in Madison,
Wisconsin, on April 8th, 2011. (Photo: ra_hurd)  The funniest
thing about Wile E. Coyote is how far he has gone beyond the
edge of the cliff before he gives that big-eyed, "Uh-oh!"
expression, realizing he's got a long fall coming. It isn't
funny to the coyote, but it is to us. It's our schadenfreude:
the joy we derive from the misfortune of people with whom we
don't identify. Many world leaders are now facing Wile E. Coyote
moments, with more to come. As the citizen uprisings continue,
we discover that we are siding with the citizens, not their
leaders, and, as we're seeing in Wisconsin, we're not siding
with our leaders either. In one of history's ironies, Muslim
Arabs have become our role models for courage and determination
against governments that systematically keep their citizens
poor, frightened and easy to cont