Orangeberry Book of the Day - The Passion of the Christoph by Christoph Paul

Visiting Speaker’s Corner

I can remember the carnival of sounds.

Speakers’ Corner in London, where anyone can talk about anything—except for the topic of the Queen, for talking about her, that would be undignified.

On that particular Sunday, I heard the first speaker say, “God is dead, we are all just gorillas, where the European apes have surpassed the African ones.”

I asked him how he came up with such a stupid theory. He remained polite, gave me a thoughtful nod, and said, “Nietzsche and science books.”

As a fan of both I felt saddened, but told him, “Well, you are the first racist I’ve met who likes to read. I’m from Florida.”

He then told me he could see the strength of my Italian blood and that Mussolini was “truly a great man.” I said, “Um, thanks, but that doesn’t make you any less wrong or less racist.”

He responded in a dignified tone, “Well, we will just have to agree to disagree like gentleman.” He then wished me a good day and gave me a strange bow showing me that British White Supremacists are just as stupid as the American ones—only way more polite.

I left the well-read racist and walked over to a tall blond man preaching to a large crowd. He was holding a Bible and wearing Wrangler’s and a cowboy hat, with a big cross around his neck.

He called himself the Christian Cowboy and had an American accent that sounded Texan. He said he was done preaching but wasn’t finished with the Lord’s Work and he encouraged us all to follow him into battle. We did, until we arrived in front of a group of Islamic Fundamentalists.

Three of them preached for the need for Sharia Law in England. As they quoted a verse from the Qur’an, the cowboy started to laugh and heckle them, calling them Satan’s fools and terrorists. The young Muslim leader with a prepubescent beard said the Christian was the fool and should feel shame.

The cowboy responded that the boy should be ashamed because he couldn’t grow a good enough beard for Allah.

I left the holy war and walked toward a short bald man waving his hands and screaming about how sexism was good and he was a proud misogynist. He shared the wisdom that all men are stupid these days because of too many female teachers. He said the worst thing was that American lesbians had reached England because The L-Word was in syndication.

He ranted for another twenty minutes until he finally admitted it had been a really long time since he’d gotten laid.

As his soapbox turned from misogynist to trying to get sympathy sex, I left him for a more moderate-sized crowd where a clean-cut looking man in his thirties praised the practice of being a vegetarian. He gave simple-to-follow solutions to ending world hunger, losing weight, and to stopping the harming of animals.

His speech was the most sensible one I had heard so far, but his voice was very monotone and he lacked stage presence. While the small crowd nodded and a few yawned, I noticed many of them kept looking to the right, where a British black man was wearing what looked like a Burger King crown, wearing the United Kingdom flag on his back like a Superman cape.

As the vegetarian man continued to talk about the dangers of cow flatulence, the small group moved away until we reached the self-proclaimed Caped Conservative.

He welcomed us but said we were most likely ignorant peasants who didn’t realize that the only way to restore England’s greatness was to make George W. Bush prime minster of England.

He spoke with great passion on why “Dubya” was one of the greatest leaders in the history of western civilization and how England should make him a dual citizen or even king.

Most laughed at him, but an older American woman gave me a concerned look, then grabbed my arm and said, “I’m really concerned for him . . . I think he’s the craziest of them all.”