The Animation Pimp: We, Myself and You

The Pimp reacts to the events of September 11, 2001 and relates them to our little animated corner of the earth.

By Chris Robinson | Wednesday, November 21, 2001 at 12:00 am

Posted In | Columns: The Animation Pimp

Illustration by Andreas Hykade. Courtesy of Chris Robinson.

MYSELF
It's a trivial irony, but it's an irony nonetheless. Here it was, September 11, 2001, and I'm spending the morning with my formerly estranged father. For almost a decade I hated the man's guts. In my mind he was an emotional, verbal and physical bully. He was the enemy. I sometimes wished him dead for the emotional damage he did to my brother, mother and myself. Yet some ten years plus have passed and I'm sitting beside this man watching one of the most violent and tragic acts of hate ever committed on our continent (since we shot up all the natives of course).

How did I come to a point where I was able to sit with this former enemy #1? Well mostly through dialogue. Earlier this year I reached a point in my life where I needed to come to some sort of understanding of the past. I needed to know why things happened. In many cases I was given a clearer perspective of the past. Slowly I began to understand much of my father's actions. Subsequently, the hate and anger rapidly dissipated as I became more aware of what his world comprised during the dark times. That's not to say I forget. That's not to say that I excuse him for the poor decisions he made. That is to say that through dialogue I was able to eliminate my feelings of hate and anger and move on with my life with a clearer understanding of the past.

YOU
The attack of September 11 caused many of us to react in hate and anger. There were numerous calls for violent retribution. And an unharnessed moment of emotional release is to be expected. As North Americans we have not encountered anything like this so close to home. We were scared. We wondered how could someone hate us so much?

My son is three years old. When he is scared he responds by crying, screaming, scratching, biting and occasionally hitting. We don't tolerate it...but as frustrated as we can get, we have not and will not "retaliate" by spanking him or hitting him. Instead we try to teach him that it's wrong to hit, that it's ok to be scared and upset, and in general to sit down and talk about it so that he can find the words to explain why he doesn't like this or that.

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Comments

Thank you,Mr. Robinson, for reminding me why I left the God forsaken desolation of Afghanistan and came to this wonderful country. As long as Liberals like you continue to spout your pseudo-intellectual rantings, real Americans like me will always know what we are fighting against. Do I question your right to say what you think and feel? Absolutely not. But guess what pal? Nobody cares. We, the productive members of society who cherish our God given (and it IS God given) freedom always need to remember who the enemy is. It is people like you who seek nothing more in life than to tear down anything or anyone who doesn't share their misanthropic, myopic view of America. You want to see real hate and intolerance? I suggest you look in the mirror. I was born an Arab. By the grace of God, I made it to this country and became an American. A conservative, Christian Republican American at that. I have not been 'cut off' from my culture by American media. It has simply reinforced what I've always felt inside: that with all the flaws this country has, with all the mistakes it as made in the past, it is still the best place to live on God's green earth. If you really believe that there are no evil men, only evil acts, extend that to your fellow countrymen and get off your soapbox. No one is listening anyway.

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Hamid Faraz (not verified) | Fri, 08/23/2002 - 00:00 | Permalink

While I respect the point that is being brought up, I would like to pose an additional thought. The Animation Pimp has a valid point in thinking that whom ever was involved with the terrorist attacks of September 11th is mearly striking out because they lack the ability to communicate what is truly bothering them. But I ask, how many times would your child try to tell you what they want before they explode at you? How many times do you say, "Just a minute" before you acutally listen to your child? How many times, at a lesser level, have those terrorists tried to get their message accross? How many times have we ignored them? What else is going to happen before we pull our heads from the sand and look the problem straight in the face.

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S. Tallman (not verified) | Fri, 01/18/2002 - 01:00 | Permalink

One of the lesser tragedies of September 11 is that it took the murder of six thousand people to get our flightiest and most pointless cultural commentators to try to make sense. Bill Maher of "Politically Incorrect" discovered that he couldn't play the smartass, irreverant jerk - and now he's finding he can't play a serious commentator, either. "Tom Tomorrow," the cartoonist of "This Modern World," who calls everyone an idiot who doesn't follow the Old Socialist Beliefs he hands down from his alabaster throne, was actually at a loss for words in the first time in his useless life. And now, the Animation Pimp writes an article that approaches coherent thought and has a genuine direction. Whether or not you agree with him (and I differ with him in several places) for the first time he is saying something with meaning. Instead of taking this public forum as a place to glorify himself, he recognizes what was once called "journalistic integrity." I'm glad, but I just wish it didn't require the death of thousands of human beings to accomplish.